million as well as earmark further research for other methods that would allow giant missiles to be based. The vote was seen as a rebuff of the Reagan administration. In February 1982, Byrd wrote a letter to President Reagan urging him to "withdraw the Administration's proposed fiscal 1983 budget, and resubmit a budget that provides for much lower deficits and makes use of more realistic assumptions", recalling his previous appeal to President Carter in 1980 amid the rise of soaring inflation rates and Carter afterward consulting with Democrats in Congress. Byrd stated that he was in favor of "a document we in Congress can work with, one based on realistic assumptions, one which shows a much clearer trend toward a balanced budget." Byrd had cautious praise for a proposal by Democrat Fritz Hollings called for a freeze on all benefit programs with the exception of food stamps, Medicare and Medicaid in addition to a freeze on military spending while eliminating a pay increase for federal employees. In March 1982, Byrd announced he would introduce an amendment to the War Powers Act that would bar the president from being able to send combat troops to the Salvadoran Civil War without the approval of Congress. Byrd described the proposal as only allowing the president to act with independence in the event that Americans needed to evacuate El Salvador or if the United States was attacked. "It is my view that if Americans are to be asked to shed their blood in the jungles of El Salvador, all Americans should first have an opportunity to debate and carefully evaluate that action." By March 1982, along with Alan Cranston, Byrd was one of two senators supporting both the measure sponsored by Henry M. Jackson and John W. Warner calling upon the United States and the Soviet Union to freeze their nuclear arsenals at "equal and sharply reduced levels" and the bill sponsored by Ted Kennedy and Mark Hatfield calling upon the two countries first to negotiate a freeze on nuclear forces at existing levels before following atomic arms reduction. In January 1983, after President Reagan said during his 1983 State of the Union Address that he hoped for the same bipartisan support that had produced the Social Security recommendations would lead Congress during the year on other issues, Byrd and House Majority Leader Jim Wright assailed the unfairness of a six-month delay in the