Packwood Sees No Freeze on Arms Budget

Senate Finance Committee chairman Robert Packwood said Friday that the Pentagon must share in spending reductions but predicted that Congress will not vote to freeze the military budget.

And the new head of the House Budget Committee said Democratic sentiment is running against cutting the Social Security program to reduce the deficit, if possible.

The back-to-back comments show how hard it will be to cut the budget, even though nearly everyone in the federal government realizes it must be slashed to curb the deficit.

Packwood’s comments came as he went into a six-hour budget meeting with Senate Republican leaders and Budget Director David Stockman at the Blair House, across the street from the White House.

Packwood said he hoped that the budget could be cut enough to chop the federal deficit by more than half--down to $100 billion by 1988, from the currently predicted $225 billion in fiscal 1986 and $240 billion in fiscal 1987.

President Reagan has pledged to do just that, but has balked at reducing military spending under pressure from Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger.

“I would be willing within reason to vote for any spending cuts that will get us there,” Packwood told reporters. “I don’t think there’s anything that’s beyond the bound of the cuts, not the military, not anything.

But asked if Congress would be willing to freeze defense spending at this year’s level of about $294 billion, Packwood replied: “”No, I don’t think we will.”

“Are there programs that this country can get along without? Yes,” he said. “Do we have the votes? I don’t know.”

At the White House, an Administration spokesmen reaffirmed Reagan’s opposition to using reductions in Social Security as a deficit-cutting measure.

Stockman on Thursday told congressional leaders that a slowdown in economic growth will mean even more red ink than the projected $200 billion this year. His estimates triggered warnings from GOP senators that Social Security cost-of-living increases might have to be curtailed.

Rep. William Gray (D-Pa.), who was elected chairman of the important budget panel by House Democrats in a private caucus Friday, said there is a strong feeling in the House that if enough spending reductions can be made elsewhere to “ensure economic growth and productivity, that we ought to be able to do it without Social Security.”

“I’m hopeful that we might be able to do that,” he told reporters. “At this time I’m not able to say that we are going to be able to do it.”

White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said flatly: “We’re not making any changes in Social Security,” when asked about a suggestion by Assistant Senate GOP leader Alan Simpson that Congress might take the lead in trimming Social Security benefit increases.

Asked if Reagan--who made a campaign promise not to tamper with Social Security--might accept cuts should Congress propose them, Fitzwater said, “No.”

Gray also said he saw no enthusiasm in the House for tax increases, something Reagan also is against, and said the President is going to have to take the lead on any reform of the tax system.

The budget process is in its last stages, with Reagan listening to personal appeals from Cabinet officers whose budgets have been slashed.

Gray said cuts are going to have to be made equitably, including reductions in Pentagon and domestic spending.

Stockman earlier presented Reagan with a plan to cut the burgeoning deficit in half by 1988. But Reagan, bowing to demands for smaller bites from the defense budget, is still $40 billion short of Stockman’s goal.