Reagan Vetoes Road Bill, Sets Stage for Fight

WASHINGTON —  President Reagan delivered his threatened veto of an $87.5-billion highway construction bill Friday, setting up a political tussle over pork-barrel spending that aides hope will revitalize his damaged image as a leader.

In rejecting legislation passed last week by the House and Senate, the President called the highway bill “unsound” and a “budget-buster,” saying that it gives too much cash to too few states and wastes billions on special-interest projects.

152 Projects Singled Out

The White House has long targeted the bill’s $870-million authorization for the Los Angeles Metro Rail subway for criticism. On Friday, Reagan singled out 152 other projects tacked on to the measure, at an estimated cost of $1.4 billion, as similarly wasteful.

The tough talk was scorned on Capitol Hill, where two-thirds of the House and Senate now must vote to override the veto if the measure is to become law. The highway bill’s promise of thousands of new construction jobs and a clause raising rural interstate highway speed limits to 65 m.p.h. has enjoyed bipartisan support.

The veto battle is expected to be close. The Democrat-dominated House is expected to easily override Reagan, but the Senate, which passed the highway bill on March 20 by a 79-17 margin, needs to keep 67 of those votes to enact the bill into law.

Democrats warned that Reagan’s veto, if upheld, would delay billions in federal highway grants to states until a new law is passed, well after the crucial spring construction season. The five-year transportation package includes $17.9 billion for mass transit and enough money to finally complete the interstate highway system begun under President Dwight D. Eisenhower some 30 years ago.

Sen. Alan J. Dixon (D-Ill.), who steered the bill through the Senate, called the President’s action a “potential disaster for the economic future of this country.”

“Thousands of Illinois jobs, and our state’s infrastructure, depend on the passage of this bill,” he said.

Reagan Offers New Bill

But Reagan and his advisers, casting themselves as underdogs in a war on lobbyists and their captive lawmakers, immediately sent a slimmed-down version of the road bill to Congress and dared legislators to pass it in a week.

The new version, Transportation Secretary Elizabeth Hanford Dole said, would eliminate the 152 so-called “demonstration projects” in the bill vetoed by Reagan, and much of the funding for mass transit, including the Los Angeles subway system.

That measure is given slim chance of being accepted.

In attempting to make his veto stick, Reagan faces substantial opposition within his own party. Republicans voted overwhelmingly for the measure, and even House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) said he might be forced to vote against the White House.

The President on Friday began political arm-twisting sessions on the veto issue in personal meetings with two or three reluctant senators. Earlier, returning on Air Force One from an appearance in Columbia, Mo., he called several House members to urge that they reject the bill.

‘I’m Squirming’

“I’m squirming,” said Rep. Trent Lott (R-Miss.), who received a call from Reagan while in New York at a conference of House Republicans.

White House officials said they are steadily gaining supporters in the veto fight, but said Reagan will make his point to Congress on federal spending, win or lose.

“There’s a great deal of pressure coming from the highway lobby right now, no question about that,” Dole said. “But you know, whether or not the veto is sustained, the President wins, because he’s ready here to set the tone for all of the budget debate that’s coming up.”

Dole took dead aim at the Los Angeles subway project, stressing that the $870-million construction allotment in the bill for nine miles of the subway is “14% of the pot, 14% of the mass-transit funding in the legislation that was vetoed.”

“That would be $870 million for Los Angeles, which already gets about $203 million,” she said. “And, looking at their cash-flow numbers on Los Angeles, it’s clear that locally they can pay for an extension of the Metro which they seek rather than looking to Uncle Sam to do it for them.”

Dole’s remarks indicate what some Reagan advisers have said privately: that win or lose, the veto battle restores Reagan to his popular role of crusader against government spending and helps rebuild the strong leader image he enjoyed before the Iran- contra affair began to erode his popularity.

Cites Lack of Discipline

The President’s two-page veto message said the highway legislation failed “to exercise the discipline that is required to constrain federal spending, especially pork-barrel spending.” He, too, took aim at the Los Angeles subway project, saying it “grossly distorts” transit spending priorities.

Reagan said his replacement highway proposal, which would redistribute some of the available transportation funds according to a longstanding formula, would give 43 states more transportation money than the vetoed bill provides and lessen the share for seven others.

In Congress, Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) took up the President’s cause, offering a resolution that urged the Senate to take up a new highway bill within seven working days, should the White House veto be sustained.

Move Called ‘Frivolous’

But Sen. Dole’s move was condemned as “frivolous” and “pure gamesmanship” by Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.) and was dubbed “highway robbery of the Senate’s common-sense” by one of the highway measure’s original sponsors, Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.). The resolution eventually was killed by a 49-45 vote.

By day’s end, both sides claimed to be ready for a fight over the vetoed bill next week but, oddly, neither was claiming an edge.

“We’re definitely the underdogs,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said Friday. But Byrd said that White House “arm-twisting and PR” would make it difficult for the Senate to override Reagan’s action.

Times staff writers Karen Tumulty and Oswald Johnston contributed to this story.