Won’t Share Power in White House, Regan Says

Treasury Secretary Donald T. Regan said Friday that, when he begins his new job as White House chief of staff, he will consolidate the power President Reagan once vested in his three closest aides and that everyone else on the staff will report to the President through him.

Regan said that “I’m not trying to grab power” in his job trade with White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III, but he made it clear that all previous power-sharing arrangements will be halted.

He said that “I’m not going to fire anybody” but that “there will be changes in personnel.”

The former chairman of Merrill Lynch & Co. said that he will not be a “yes man” to the President.

In a breakfast interview with wire service reporters that focused on personnel and economic matters, he said also that Reagan’s willingness to go along with Congress if it should decide to freeze Social Security benefits is consistent with his campaign pledges.

Reagan said this week that, if Congress insisted on a freeze, “I would have to look at that situation and what I was faced with, with regard to a possible congressional mandate.” In a campaign debate with Democratic opponent Walter F. Mondale, the President had said that he would “never stand for a reduction” of Social Security benefits for persons “now getting them.”

In discussing the job trade, Regan, 66, said that the functions performed by the White House “Big Three”--Baker, Deputy Chief of Staff Michael K. Deaver and presidential counselor Edwin Meese III--will still be performed but that “I’ll be doing the whole thing now. Others will be reporting in to me and then to the President, rather than directly.”

Throughout Reagan’s first term, Baker, Deaver and Meese divided the staff operation among themselves, and each had direct access to the Oval Office. Deaver’s decision to leave government was announced last week, and Meese is Reagan’s nominee to be attorney general.

When asked if he foresees a major post for U.N. Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who has announced plans to leave the United Nations and is a favorite candidate of hard-line conservatives to succeed Meese as a White House policy adviser, Regan replied: “Possibly. I haven’t talked to Jeane about anything, and I don’t know what her particular plans are.”

Regan said that he came up with the idea of trading jobs because he knew that Baker was tired of his job and believed that the President needed someone from inside the Administration to take over.

On economic matters, Regan said that he is working on his tax simplification plan and may send it to Congress sometime after the budget is presented next month. But he said that deficit reduction must take precedence over tax reform.

He said that, although budget deficits are the No. 1 problem facing the nation, lawmakers who want to reduce red ink by freezing Social Security cost-of-living increases would get no encouragement from the White House.

“Let’s get it straight,” Regan said. “If there were a bipartisan majority of the Congress in favor of anything, the President would have to take a look at it. That’s only natural.”

Senate Republican leaders want to delay the next cost-of-living raise for Social Security recipients as part of an overall budget freeze.