Budget Backbone--Finally?

At long last, President Reagan has conveyed to the American people the urgency of doing something about the deficit. Unfortunately, he grossly overstated the imperative that Congress accept his budget program without change.

The President tried the same sort of appeal that he has used in the past with national-security issues like AWACS planes for Saudi Arabia and the purchase of more MX missiles. But the win-one-for-the-Gipper approach is neither warranted in the case of the budget, nor should Congress be bullied into the same sort of reaction.

With the MX missiles, for instance, you make them or you don’t. There is no in alternative. With the budget, there are alternatives that make more sense and that still reach everyone’s target of reducing the deficit by roughly $100 billion during the next three years. The President is to be commended for finally telling the people that they face some economic sacrifice in attacking the deficit problem. They are willing to. But his claim that no part of the budget is spared begs for a closer look. Some parts of the budget clearly get spared more than others.

The President has agreed to somewhat decelerate his military buildup. But the Defense Department still would get an increase of 3% after inflation, or an expected boost of about 7% under the plan that he negotiated with Senate Republican leaders.

The real sacrifice comes on the domestic side of the budget ledger. A number of programs that have served the nation well would be eliminated without a real effort to assess their worth. Others would be sharply reduced. And those that are spared the sacrifice include businesses with bountiful profits that pay no income tax.

The President certainly was correct Wednesday when he said: “The one thing we cannot do is to stay on the immoral, dead-end course of deficit spending.” But he is being overly moralistic when he continues to lay all the blame on Congress and talk as if someone else had been President the past four years as the deficit nearly doubled. Members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, have been pretty much on their own in recent months in providing leadership toward a realistic budget solution. They have had little help from the President, who continues to close the door on the potential key elements of a workable budget plan: some more defense trimming and a modest tax increase.

Further, the President is off base when he claims that “this is no time for partisanship and that our future is too precious to permit this crucial effort to be picked apart, piece by piece, by the special-interest groups.” The special-interest groups that are involved in the long budget process just happen to be the people. Their voices deserve to be heard just as strongly as those at the Pentagon.