Ron 3, Dems 0:

...The president's priorities in foreign aid also fared well as Congress ducked the usually contentious direct funding bill for the second year in a row and provided for foreign aid in an omnibus continuing resolution...

...What was left instead was an accumulation of legislative accomplishments that had been well-modulated by the power of the presidency...

...The president has until April 1985, well past the November elections, before he must pull the Marines out...

...The defense appropriations also contained $24 million for "covert" aid to Nicaraguan guerrillas, a compromise provision drafted November 17 by House and Senate conferees...

...There are those who will point to Reagan's January budget request for a 10 percent "real" growth rate in defense funding and then to the June congressional budget resolution's halving of that rate to 5 percent, and thus interpret the actual 4 percent spending as a White House loss...

...Washington report RON 3, DEMS 0 THE PRESIDENT STILL LEADS CONGRESS "CATS AND DOGS may be brought up at any time," so warned the House Democratic cloakroom recording after listing the items scheduled for the session's last day, November 18...

...The congressional leadership has noted that the War Powers sixty-day "clock" started running on the day Grenada was invaded, October 25...

...Notwithstanding those sensitive to feline and canine defamation, this wry allusion is made at every session's closing to measures of dubious merit that might slink or bark their way to the floor in the final flurry of late nights and ever-shortening attention spans...

...The reduction, however, was distributed across the board with no fundamental changes in the president's defense policy...

...Yet while the appropriated level was cut by $21.5 million below Reagan's request, he was starting fiscal 1984 well ahead of his beginning in the previous fiscal year when Congress approved only $21.3 million...

...Supplementals and funds transfers eventually brought El Salvador $81.3 million in fiscal 1983 military funding...

...Opponents of the aid held up as a victory the precedent set by barring the president from spending any further funds for covert aid without his going back to Congress for more monies-possibly as early as 1984...

...Nearly all Senate Democrats opposed such an extension in principle as an erosion of legislative authority...

...Ronald Reagan scored exceedingly well in defense and foreign policy...

...Of course, Lebanon and Grenada are the most frequently cited instances where presidential power is seen to be overshadowing Congress...

...Congress was assured by White House spokesman Larry Speakes, two days before the scheduled end of the session, that the sixty-day deadline of the War Powers Act did not need to be invoked in the case of Grenada since all U. S. combat troops would leave the island by late December (non-combat troops might have to stay until early 1984...

...Moreover, the president scored again when a provision was dropped in the defense bill conference that would have established a procedure giving the Appropriations and Intelligence Committees veto power over any new CIA covert operations...

...Save for the production of binary munitions (nerve gas), Congress approved every new weapons system he requested...

...Well, the president may still have the "bat and the ball," but Congress can call for a tenth inning...

...Congress withheld 30 percent of El Salvador's $64.8 million military aid until the Salvadoran government completes its investigation of the former national guardsmen accused of murdering the four American churchwomen in December 1980, brings the accused to trial (which has been repeatedly delayed), and obtains a verdict...

...Attempts by Senate Democrats during the last weeks of the session to restrict the authority granted the president failed...

...Reagan has ninety percent of the power and Tip has five percent...

...This grants Reagan greater freedom than any recent president in allocating military aid among countries...

...House Speaker Tip O'Neill himself underscored this political reality, justifying a compromise with the White House by noting that Ronald Reagan had "the bat and the ball...

...Marines to remain in Lebanon up to eighteen months...

...This administration has mastered the skill of asking for much more than it possibly could get in order to gain strategic victories while complaining painfully over any wrenching compromises...

...The covert operation had previously been maintained through CIA contingency funds and secret parts of defense and intelligence spending measures...

...Although the total military aid to be withheld is limited to 30 percent, another 10 percent is to be withheld until the president certifies to Congress that Salvadoran authorities have not taken any action that would "modify, alter, suspend, or terminate" the land reform program in a manner detrimental to the intended beneficiaries...

...Not only has he avoided a congressionally mandated date for cutting off the operation, but by mid-1984 Reagan will have provided aid to the anti-Sandinistas for more than two years with little interference from Congress...

...Well, the third game was not so much of a rout as the first two, but after all the hits were added up, Congress's third session during the Reagan administration still ended with more of the runs going to the president...

...Maryland Republican Senator Charles "Mac" Mathias maintained that although "humanitarian development assistance" has increased by 10 percent under the Reagan administration, military aid has increased 100 percent...

...earlier, he had declined to report to Congress under provisions of the Act...

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

...The $249.9 billion defense appropriations, cleared for the president on the session's last day, was a 4 percent increase, after inflation, over fiscal 1983...

...Of course, Reagan's refusal to allow any tax increase, a stance assuring the failure of the congressional attempt to reduce the $200 billion deficit, leaves increasing uncertainty as to American standing in the Western Division for the World Series...

...Certain members take comfort in the fact that, for the first time in the ten-year history of the War Powers Act, a War Powers Resolution was formally recognized by a president, when Reagan signed into law the resolution authorizing U.S...

...On the other hand, in signing the measure he questioned the constitutionality of the Act and explicitly reserved his prerogatives as commander in chief of the armed forces...

...In addition to supporting the president's campaign for boosting arms sales, the continuing resolution scores again for executive power by not stipulating the accounts under which aid is given...

...The Senate Foreign Relations Committee bottled up a Democratic resolution to force a Marine withdrawal in early 1984 unless a further period was approved by Congress...

...Yet the advantage seems to be with the president...

...These restrictions stand despite the president's pocket veto of another measure dealing with the same matters...

...It is expected that the administration will seek additional military aid as the fiscal year progresses...

...The clause authorizes Speaker O'Neill and Majority Leader Baker to reconvene Congress during the recess, if warranted by the "public interest...

...It was just the possibility of such a Christmas surprise-or some even bigger gift-wrapped marvel from the White House-that prompted the leadership to place an unusual phrase in the adjournment resolution...

...Yet there were relatively few surprises or strange animals of any sort appearing in the last days of the first session of the ninety-eighth Congress...

...But Speaker O'Neill negotiated the compromise resolution and was able to bring along about half the House Democrats with him to pass the measure...

...As compared to fiscal 1983 amounts, the bill increased military aid programs 15 percent and cut funding for economic and development aid by 5.6 percent (counting both on- and off-budget items...

...The government is a shared relationship," observed Wisconsin Democrat Rep...

...David Obey...