Dole Assails Weinberger on Budget Stance

Majority Leader Robert J. Dole (R-Kan.), venting frustration over the Senate GOP’s difficulty in reaching a budget accord, lashed out at Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger on Friday for trying to “sit out” deficit-reduction efforts.

Also, in an unusually sharp attack on an Administration official, Dole accused Weinberger of using inflated economic figures to exaggerate Pentagon belt-tightening.

“They’ve been able to survive over there (at the Pentagon) without much difficulty,” Dole said in a speech to public relations executives. “I think the rest of the country needs to survive too.”

Dole suggested that Weinberger’s unyielding attitude on military spending was hampering efforts by Senate Republicans to draw up a deficit-reduction package.

“I’m willing to go after sensitive programs . . . but don’t count on me if Weinberger continues to sit it out,” Dole said. “We’re in real trouble if we can’t get together on defense numbers.

Spending Restraint

“I won’t say everything is lost if we don’t get more defense spending restraint--but we might be close to it,” he added.

Weinberger agreed to trim $8.7 billion from an overall proposed defense budget of $286 billion, but that still leaves a substantial increase over the current budget. Weinberger has repeatedly cautioned congressional leaders not to include Pentagon spending in any across-the-board spending freeze.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) also voiced frustration on Friday with Weinberger’s uncompromising attitude, but in a gentler fashion than his Senate colleague. “That’s (Weinberger’s) posture. I know it. We’ve been dealing with it. We’ve got to deal with it again,” Michel said, speaking later in the day to the same group addressed by Dole.

“I never saw a defense budget that couldn’t be cut,” Michel added.

Meanwhile, Dole announced that he will seek to use a parliamentary shortcut to try to obtain quick congressional action on cutting the deficit, but the idea immediately ran into strong opposition from House Democrats.

‘Reconciliation’ Bill

Dole said that he hopes to use a single so-called “reconciliation” bill to handle all the budget cuts, a process similar to that used in early 1981, when President Reagan’s domestic budget cuts were moved through Congress in one package.

“The House is not going to go along with that,” House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said, adding that the House would stick to the usual procedure of requiring a congressional budget outline to be completed by May 15, with measures to implement the outline to follow later in the year.

“The idea that you can come up with a razzle-dazzle package and expect us to swallow it whole is poor reasoning . . . . We’re not going to do it,” Wright said.

Dole has been leading an attempt by Senate Republicans to seize the initiative on deficit reduction and to write their own plan--apart from the one President Reagan is expected to submit to Congress on Feb. 4--with a goal of reducing next fiscal year’s projected defict by $50 billion.

But the Senate Republican plan faltered last week as GOP senators argued among themselves over military spending levels and over whether a spending freeze should include scheduled cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients, a move that would save $6 billion.

The refusal by Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, to even participate in the budget-reduction drive until the Administration’s Pentagon budget is announced further slowed the Senate GOP effort.

Dole said that, to meet the deficit-reduction goal, “you can’t just get there with a freeze” and that many programs would have to be cut. Cutting domestic programs will be politically more difficult if such cuts are not countered with at least a measure of military spending restraint, Dole said.

He disputed Weinberger’s contention that he had already cut $8.7 billion from the Pentagon budget, saying: “He uses a different inflation rate” in his calculations, one higher than that used in other budget projections. Dole contended also that the Defense Department used unrealistically high prices for oil in figuring fuel costs.