Freezing the House:

...An amendment that had focused attention on one of the more contentious issues was offered by Dan Lungren of California...

...After adoption of the Levitas amendment, leaders on both sides of the debate agreed to move promptly to a final votesince each could claim some degree of success...

...A dozen of the freeze resolution's opponents of last August had been defeated for reelection...

...Assuredly, presidential policies will be considered by a more technically sophisticated and politically sensitive House as a result of the freeze resolution...

...The House action and the bishops' statement were undoubtedly factors in the administration's new approach to arms control, one marked by: (1) new flexibility in the negotiations on Euromissiles and intercontinental-range bombers and missiles...

...Levitas in support of his amendment...

...The freeze backers (including some Republicans) successfully defended their resolution, revealing impressive Democratic party discipline and a capable cadre of younger leaders able to counter plausible amendments with their own pertinent facts, telling arguments, and qualifying amendments...

...What monitoring agreements would be necessary as the first technical step in the verification process...

...By most accounts, the Reagan administration is now being forced to recognize at least the political importance of arms control...

...Conference of Mayors, and Common Cause...

...For example, under a freeze what would be done about replacing worn-out weapons or delivery systems...

...As reported out by the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the new resolution called for an immediate, mutual, verifiable freeze on testing, production, and further deployment of nuclear warheads, missiles, and other delivery systems, and for the strategic arms talks to incorporate negotiations on intermediate-range nuclear missiles...

...JEREMIAH BARUCH (Jeremiah Baruch is the pseudonym of a Washington writer with a position in government...

...2) addressing the serious technical questions surrounding the MX and the single-warhead ICBM...

...About thirty amendments were adopted-some as proposed by freeze opponents, others as further amended by freeze advocates-which greatly expanded the original text of the resolution...

...The net effect of the adopted amendment was to require suspension of a freeze agreement if it were not followed by arms reductions within a specified period...

...Freeze proponents, however, viewed the amendment as maintaining the core of the resolution's priorities-a freeze first, followed by reductions-and this was so argued by Rep...

...A wide range of national organizations had come to support a mutual and verifiable nuclear freeze, including the United Auto Workers, the U.S...

...and the Soviet Union to freeze the testing, production, and deployment of nuclear weapons and their delivery systems...

...and both reflect a further education, outside the Pentagon, in arms control, military strategy, and weapons systems...

...Washington report FREEZING THE HOUSE A TWO-YEAR EDUCATION THE traditional rivalry between the City of Man and the City of God cooled for a brief moment during the first week of May, as the House of Representatives approved a nuclear freeze resolution on May 4, by a vote of 278-149, and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted, one day earlier, a 150-page pastoral letter on the morality of nuclear weapons, by an overwhelming 238-9...

...Freeze critics, mostly Republicans but also some Democrats, scored good debating points...

...both statements were expanded considerably as their applications and implications were considered...

...and Soviet strategic forces to equal levels, followed by a freeze...

...Both decisions parallel each other in these respects: efforts for both began over two years ago...

...Nonetheless, the debate has left members of the House better equipped to follow the labyrinthine military strategies and alternative weapons systems underpinning budget resolutions and defense appropriations bills...

...Freeze advocates were not prepared with ready or consistent answers...

...The administration's intransigence on increasing defense spending and opposing added taxes may continue to stymie the political process to such an extent that the House may be called upon to exercise this ability in a much more significant fashion...

...Would research and development continue in such crucial matters as anti-aircraft and anti-submarine warfare systems...

...both statements were actively opposed by the Reagan administration...

...Lungren viewed the report's language as an unconstitutional intrusion into the president's power to negotiate treaties...

...the House then accepted substitute language calling for sharp reductions in U.S...

...The dramatic growth in the U.S...

...As an added indication, the president announced that he is "leaning" toward the "build down" proposal of Senators Cohen and Nunn...

...The amendment specified that the resolution was not "binding on the president or his negotiators...

...One might hope that the administration's upcoming strategic decisions on nuclear arms will be examined by a more morally sophisticated electorate as a result of the bishops' efforts...

...But as the debate wore on, pertinent questions were raised by opponents...

...Eleven state legislatures, nine states and the District of Columbia by referendum, 321 city councils, 444 New England town meetings, and 63 county councils had all endorsed freeze resolutions...

...grass-roots nuclear freeze movement is usually traced to a 1980 memorandum written by Randall Forsberg, entitled "Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race...

...The freeze debate extended over forty-two hours on six different days to become one of the longer House debates in recent years...

...both statements had the effect of guiding rather than binding...

...Would modernization be allowed...

...and (3) providing unconditional presidential support for the Scowcroft commission report...

...and the Soviet Union and that an immediate U.S...

...A December 1982 Gallup poll revealed that seventy-one percent of Americans favored a bilateral nuclear freeze agreement...

...weapons buildup is necessary to offset Soviet military advantages before an agreement on reductions...

...By last March 16, when the next freeze resolution was brought to the House floor, the full impact of the November elections and of the freeze movement had become evident...

...In having to stand up to the charge of intellectual simplicity inherent in the freeze notion and assume responsibility for its consequences, the House Democrats, as Michael Barone of the Washington Post observed, have demonstrated an ability to govern...

...by the 1982 elections, the movement had so expanded that over a quarter of the nation's electorate confronted freeze resolutions on twenty-eight state or local ballots, with twenty-five being passed...

...The resolution is highly unlikely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate and, should it pass, has been promised a presidential veto...

...Although the resolution was worded in advisory rather than mandatory terms-the president's negotiators "should" rather than "shall" pursue a freeze-the Foreign Affairs Committee report said that "the purpose of the resolution is to mandate objectives for the conduct" of the arms control negotiations...

...It was no surprise that the home state of the resolution's chief sponsor, Foreign Affairs Chairman Clement Zablocki of Wisconsin, had approved a freeze resolution referendum by seventy-five percent, or that, given the nation-wide results, he was joined by 200 colleagues as co-sponsors...

...Sparked by this document, a freeze movement was initiated and won referenda in several western Massachusetts state senatorial districts in November 1980...

...The House Democratic leadership was initially quite sanguine about the passage of the freeze resolution, expecting a 40 to 50 vote margin...

...In August 1982, a freeze resolution had almost passed the House, filing short by two votes 204-202...

...With the priority remaining a freeze first, advocates argued that the House resolution still represented an implicit repudiation of the administration's position that there was no military parity between the U.S...

...sition in government...

...Lungren pointed out that the freeze proponents were taking contradictory positions on whether the resolution was binding on the administration or simply symbolic...

...In the first major test vote, the administration-backed language, which had won last August, and which called for a reduction of weapons arsenals as the priority and only then for a freeze, lost in a 215 to 209 vote...

...Freeze advocates successfully eluded the question of how "binding" the resolution would be by amending the Lungren proposal so that nothing in the resolution would supersede the treaty-making powers of the president under the Constitution...

...One of the major amendments upon which the administration and its supporters seized as a sign of victory was originally offered by Elliott Levitas of Georgia...

...Forsberg called for the U.S...