Senate Backs Bush in Budget Vote : Priorities: The effort by Sen. Harkin to divert $3 billion from the armed services to domestic programs is defeated by a 69-28 count.

WASHINGTON —  In the first test of whether Congress will break its budget agreement and reorder spending priorities following the collapse of Soviet communism, the Senate on Tuesday blocked a plan to trim Pentagon outlays by $3 billion and divert the money to a series of popular domestic programs.

The 69-28 vote, which supported President Bush’s position, foiled a move by Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to reformulate budget policy on the Senate’s first day at work since the breathtaking changes in the Soviet Union in August.

In a related development, House Majority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) assailed the President for not showing more leadership after the failed Soviet coup and renewed his call for diversion of $3 billion in defense funds to help Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union achieve economic reform.

Bush is “more comfortable defending an outdated, $300-billion defense Establishment than in helping the Soviets move decisively toward economic reform,” Gephardt said.

But the Administration remained firmly opposed to any shift in funds away from the Pentagon that would require revision of the 1990 budget agreement designed to reduce an estimated $350-billion deficit.

“The United States has a serious deficit problem and a spending problem that it has to get under control,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

Harkin, who is expected to announce his presidential candidacy Sunday, argued unsuccessfully in the Senate that military spending could be safely reduced to raise outlays for medical research, screening for breast cancer, funding for Head Start and grants for low-income college students.

“Do we continue to throw billions of dollars to confront the nonexistent threat of the past?” he asked in a daylong debate over the $204.3-billion appropriations bill for the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Education and related agencies.

“We’ve won the Cold War,” Harkin added. “Now let’s win the domestic war and close the human investment gap.”

But key leaders of the Senate argued against violating the budget accord, painfully negotiated last fall between Congress and the White House, by tapping Pentagon funds to raise spending for health and education programs. “This is a short-term ticket to fiscal chaos,” contended Sen. Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, who--along with Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, the ranking Republican on the panel--urged adherence to the budget agreement.

Other critics of the proposal said that it is too soon to make additional cuts in U.S. defense outlays because of uncertainties about the stability of the new regime in Moscow and the need to maintain discipline over the budget process.

Sen. Brock Adams (D-Wash.), who is facing a tough fight for reelection, sided with Harkin. He declared that the vote was only the opening gun in a new budget battle.

And, saying that the United States does not need to spend $160 billion to defend Europe, Adams added: “This institution (the Senate) risks being the last outpost of the Cold War. . . .”

Under budget agreement rules, Harkin’s proposal required a majority of 60 votes to succeed, so he fell 32 votes short. John Seymour, California’s Republican senator, opposed Harkin’s plan and Alan Cranston, the state’s Democratic senator, did not vote.