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Technically, the House did not vote on Dense Pack. It only eliminated $988 million sought by the Administration to produce the first five of the 226 MX missiles it wants to acquire in a program that would cost at least $30 billion. In fact, the House readily approved spending $2.5 billion for continued research and development of the MX and its basing system, presumably something other than Dense Pack. The House did not reject Reagan's basic argument that the 1,000 Minutemen are vulnerable to a first strike from improved Soviet ICBMs and that the MX is needed, in some form, to counter that threat. But in effect the House was saying no to Dense Pack when it killed the production funds.
New York's Democratic Congressman Joseph Addabbo, 57, an obscure and almost shy eleven-term Representative from Queens, led the fight against MX production. He had heard Air Force officers briefing House members on Dense Pack. "That went over like a lead balloon," he recalled later. "The more they tried to explain Dense Pack, the less the members knew." Addabbo had also heard that not even the Joint Chiefs of Staff were wholly behind Dense Pack.
On the day of the vote, Reagan summoned 76 Congressmen to the White House for a sales pitch from himself, Vice President George Bush and Weinberger. The President warned against turning the imminent Dec. 7 vote into another Pearl Harbor. Still, his enthusiasm for Dense Pack was far from contagious. He called it "the option with the least warts." Weinberger worked the telephones hard, pressing Congressmen to support all of the MX funding. He called one Representative three times, finally getting an impatient reply: "I'm a no vote. If I changemy mind, I'll call you."
On Capitol Hill, Addabbo got strong help in rounding up anti-production votes from Washington Democrat Norman Dicks. Several Republicans who did not want to be lobbied by Reagan told Dicks, "I'm probably going to vote with you, but don't tell the White House." Despite the heat, Mississippi Republican Trent Lott, working with Minority Leader Robert Michel of Illinois to support Reagan's position, concluded that the President would lose. He gave White House aides the news so that Reagan could withdraw from an all-out fight, perhaps by agreeing to reconsider the basing mode, and avoid a repudiation. Reagan refused.
During the debate, anti-Dense Pack Congressmen had a field day ridiculing the unproven "fratricide" and silo-hardening theories. "Pearl Harbor was the original Dense Pack," said California Democrat John Burton, reversing Reagan's argument. Iowa Republican James Leach called the attempts to harden silos beyond anything ever achieved "a public works project for the cement industry."