GOP in Senate to Draft Budget Slashing Deficit

Senate Republicans vowed Friday to produce their own proposal to cut the federal deficit to less than $100 billion by 1988, even before President Reagan submits his budget to Congress in February.

Dissatisfied with White House willingness to accept a budget deficit of about $140 billion in 1988, Senate Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.) said Senate Republican leaders and committee chairmen will submit proposals to him by Feb. 1 that will include an across-the-board spending freeze along with additional cuts in some domestic programs.

Dole said David A. Stockman, President Reagan’s budget director, suggested that the Senate Republicans develop their own plan, hinting that the Administration could not accomplish the same goal because the President has pledged not to cut Social Security and has accepted only modest cuts in his defense buildup.

Defense, Benefits Cuts Seen

Senate Republicans acknowledged that their own determination to get the deficit below $100 billion within three years would require cuts from the Administration’s proposed military buildup and would probably rule out the cost-of-living increases scheduled for Social Security recipients in January, 1986.

“Nothing is off-limits,” Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said after a three-hour meeting with 26 Republican senators and top White House staff members, including Stockman. “The White House is working with us, but the commitment to get it done must come from Congress.”

Several senators said White House officials acknowledged at the meeting that the President’s budget would fall well short of his initial goal: reducing the 1988 deficit, now projected to reach about $235 billion under current policies, to less than $100 billion.

Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.), chairman of the Senate GOP Policy Committee, said there had been “a little slippage as to whether they can get there in 1988 or 1989.”

The Administration’s “budget document is a starting point,” Armstrong said, “but I’m sure that we will go further.”

White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, when asked after the meeting whether the Administration was sticking to the $100-billion target, said: “I think the budget the President is working on now will shoot for that goal.” But he referred queries about figures to Stockman, who was not available for comment.

Reagan’s budget is expected to be submitted to Congress the first week in February, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said Friday, probably before Reagan’s State of the Union address, scheduled for Feb. 6.

Dole, along with Budget Committee chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), has been working for more than a month on an alternative to the Administration’s budget that would impose a spending freeze in 1986 as the quickest and fairest way to reduce growing federal deficits.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood (R-Ore.), who also attended the meeting, said it would be “a close race” to determine which of the two budget proposals would come out first.

In contrast to the White House plan, which would eliminate or slash dozens of individual domestic programs while essentially exempting Social Security and the Pentagon from cuts, Senate Republicans are attempting to spread the pain of deficit reduction across the whole spectrum of federal programs.

Some domestic programs, such as farm price supports and Medicare, would be subject to additional cuts. But food stamps and other benefit programs for the poor would probably be exempted from the freeze on the grounds that they bore the brunt of budget cutting in earlier years.

Seek Balanced Budget

“The President has made up his mind; ours will be somewhat different,” said Sen. Dave Durenberger (R-Minn.). “There was a consensus of people in there that we have to do our best to get to a balanced budget” by the end of the decade.

Dole implied that top White House staff members, while formally committed to the President’s budget, were working closely with Senate Republicans to develop their own alternative. “The White House has been with us from the start,” Dole said.

Earlier in the day, however, an Administration spokesman reaffirmed Reagan’s opposition to using reductions in Social Security benefits or in currently promised cost-of-living increases to cut the deficit.

Marlin Fitzwater, a White House press official, said flatly: “We’re not making any changes in Social Security.”

The meeting between White House aides and Senate Republicans was a continuation of a session on Thursday at which Stockman said that because of disappointing economic growth in the second half of 1984, federal deficits under current budget policies would be even higher than the Administration had projected earlier, hitting a high of $240 billion in fiscal year 1987.