Pentagon Freeze Backed in Senate : Frustrated With White House, GOP Leaders Warn They Have the Votes

Senate Republican leaders, frustrated and angry over their inability to negotiate deeper defense spending cuts with the White House, said Tuesday that they have gathered the support they need to freeze the Pentagon’s budget.

Tension had mounted Tuesday as Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger met with the Republicans--part of a campaign to build support for the 6.4% defense spending increase that President Reagan is expected to present to Congress Monday as part of his overall budget package. But Weinberger appeared only to have deepened the rift between the White House and Reagan’s party in the Senate.

Weinberger showed “no give,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.) complained after the closed-door meeting. Hatfield insisted: “There is far more concern for the deficit here on (Capitol) Hill than I’ve heard enunciated by any representative of the Administration downtown.”

Warns of Tax Increase

He also warned: “The votes are here for a total military freeze. If we don’t do that, we might as well face an inevitable tax increase--a very substantial tax increase--in the very near future.”

The threat is a serious one in light of Reagan’s pledge to raise taxes only as a “last resort”--a cornerstone of his reelection campaign. Sen. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), the assistant majority leader, agreed with Hatfield that there is “very clear unanimity that the defense budget will be frozen in a way that produces bucks. . . . You finally have to quit talking and start walking.”

Freezing the defense budget authorization would provide more than $20 billion toward the Senate Republicans’ goal of cutting $50 billion from the projected fiscal 1986 deficit. But Weinberger reportedly argued that too tight a curb on defense spending growth would encourage the Democratic-controlled House to go even further, cutting spending to a level that would endanger national security.

Although the Senate leadership appears to be moving toward a clear break with the White House, Weinberger still has some powerful allies among the Republicans, most notably Armed Services Committee Chairman Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), chairman of the defense appropriations subcommittee.

Stevens, told of Hatfield’s warning after the meeting Tuesday, said: “If it meant the difference between protecting our national security and raising taxes, I’d raise taxes.”

Weinberger also has taken his case to the public during the last few days, trying to build pressure on Congress through two network television appearances and inter views with major wire services. Asked whether more television appearances are scheduled for Weinberger, Pentagon spokesman Michael I. Burch quipped: “Yes, if you have any podium.”

Moreover, as Weinberger was meeting with the GOP senators, his deputy, William H. Taft IV, was unveiling details of a plan to shift job assignments in the Pentagon’s upper ranks, with most of the emphasis on procurement, one of the most controversial and expensive elements of the budget.

Under the reorganization, there will be an assistant secretary responsible for weapons and spare parts acquisition, military installations and logistics, and another in charge of military command, communications and intelligence matters.

The shifts were recommended two years ago by Congress after reports that the military had paid highly inflated prices for spare parts and other supplies. But Taft dismissed suggestions that the timing was part of a public relations blitz to win support on Capitol Hill.

Against Waste

“I see this as a continuation of a program we’ve been engaged in for four years,” he said. “We’ve been against waste on fair days and foul.”

Weinberger, in his vigorous campaign for support, has linked the spending plan with the prospect for success in arms control talks that will begin in March in Geneva. He told reporters after the meeting Tuesday that all possible savings have been “built into the budget we’ve submitted.”

But Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.) said that “1600 Pennsylvania Ave. (the White House address) has to understand that we have political problems, just as they have political problems.” With 22 of the Senate’s Republican majority up for reelection in 1986, GOP strategists think they are facing a tight deadline for getting the gaping deficit under control.

Without sharper defense cuts, said Heinz, who is chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, “it is going to become mathematically impossible to put together the (budget) package we need.”