Battle of the Budget (Cont.)

The Reagan Administration has launched its 1988 budget offensive early by leaking the gist of what is likely to be in the spending document that the President will send to the new Congress in January or February. The leaks signal more of the same sort of confrontation that has left Congress and the President in stalemate the past several years, with the White House even less likely to get what it wants now that Democrats control the Senate as well as the House.

The story is a familiar one: President Reagan will seek a $19-billion increase in defense spending and more big cuts in discretionary domestic spending, and will employ a variety of gimmicks that will pretend to bring the fiscal 1988 deficit in under the Gramm-Rudman target of $108 billion. As in the past, Reagan says that he will not consider any tax increase. To meet Gramm-Rudman, the budget will have to contain up to $54 billion in domestic budget cuts and sales of federal assets. Most of the proposals for doing that were rejected in the previous Congress--including the GOP-controlled Senate.

The one encouraging sign is the statement by James C. Miller III, director of the Office of Management and Budget, that he may recommend major reductions in runaway agricultural assistance, which hit $25.5 billion last year. Democrats should be willing to support such a concept if it is coupled with reforms that target assistance for the truly needy small farmer and stop massive aid to large corporate farms growing surplus crops.

Even then the Administration would be challenging Congress to fight the battles of the past two years all over again. In effect, the White House dares Congress to cut the defense budget, and Congress does just that. It is a fight that the Administration cannot win unless it is willing to consider some revenue increases and a modicum of reform in some entitlement programs that continue to grow beyond the nation’s capacity or willingness to pay for them.