It’s time for Congress to set partisanship aside and unite with President Reagan in welding a unified U. S. policy for Central America. Not a policy that cannot be questioned and revised, but a ”consensus” one on which the nation can stand with more unity than is new evident. We wield a big stick in peace efforts in Europe and Asia, and ought to be united on a bipartisan program in our own backyard where our neighbors to the south are struggling against poverty and leftist revolution. President Reagan has appealed to Congress to embrace bis economic and arms program for Central America, but there are deep divisions among the legislators – especially on a party basis – that need to be bridged. Reagan “laid it on the line” in his recent address to Congress and the nation when he charged that “tlie national security of all the Americas is at stake in Central Amerina. “If we cannot defend ourselves there, we caruiot expect to prevail elsewhere. Our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of our homeland would be put in jeopardy.” Primarily, the President seeks to salvage a proposed $110 million in U. S. aid for the besieged regime of El Salvador, which so far is being drastically cut. And he has urged Congress to ap prove his full request of about $600 million in economic and military aid for all of Central America in 1984. By usual foreign aid spending standards his requests seem reasonable enough (Reagan says the ’84 request amounts to less than onetenth of what Americans wil spend this year on coin-open ated video games.) But given the soaring budget deficits and the political party differences, the program faces an uphill fight. The Presidents nomination of a special envoy to Central America (former Sen. Richard Stone, Florida Democrat) seems a highly appropriate step and could be a key factor in reaching understandings, Reagan’s forceful speech received a warm reception generally from both sides of the political aisle. Some Democrats, however, saw “little new in the speech to change many votes in Congress” in the words of Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Clement Zablocki. D-Wis. Already, illustrative of the deep policy divisions. the House lntelligence Committee has threatened to ban covert military operations in Nicaragua, offering a substitute plan. The recent seizure in Brazil of four Libyan cargo planes loaded with arms enroute to Nicaragua should be evidence that the purely economic aid some critics propose isn’t sufficient. in asking the lawmakers to join with him in holding the line against “Soviet-Cuban subversion,” Reagan presented these goals: Support of democracy, reform, and human freedom; economic development: security for threatened nations, and negotiations among countries of the region. He assured those “who invoke the memory of Vietnam” that there is “no thought of sending American troops to Central America.” It’s appropriate to remember the tragedy of Vietnam but we must not get so polarized on that subject that we overlook growing dangers here in our own hemisphere. in congressional debate on the Central American pmgram, we presume there is still room for constnictive give-and-take. It ls hoped that after full discussion, all sides will join the President in an objective effort to devise a bipartisan approach that generally will enhance solidarity and security in the Western Hemisphere and improve the lot of the Central American nations.