The Nation - News from June 26, 1988

House and Senate negotiators voted to halt five years of growth for the Pentagon’s Strategic Defense Initiative last week by holding its budget increase for next year to 3% and demanding that much of the funds go to long-term research instead of near-term weapons development, congressional officials told the Washington Post. The resulting $3.73-billion authorization for fiscal 1989 would fall considerably short of the $4.5 billion proposed in February by Defense Secretary Frank C. Carlucci. Included in recent congressional action is a cut in the Administration’s effort to develop space-based rockets to shoot down Soviet nuclear missiles as part of the initial phase of missile defense deployments.