O’Neill Calls Reagan Talk Rhetoric of ‘an Old Man’ : Critizes His Lack of Specifics

After weeks of holding his punches, House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. went on the attack today, dismissing President Reagan’s State of the Union address as generalities of “a kindly old man.”

The Massachusetts Democrat, in his harshest criticism since the President’s landslide reelection victory last November, said Reagan “hasn’t been honest with the American people. They haven’t asked him for honesty.”

O’Neill, 72, frequently characterized Reagan as “an old man” and “a kindly old man” at a news conference.

Reagan delivered his State of the Union address Wednesday night on his 74th birthday--a fact of which Congress took official note with a chorus of “Happy Birthday” at the end of the speech.

Intentionally Easy

But today, O’Neill said Democrats had been intentionally easy on the President in their initial reactions to his speech.

“We did not want to hurt this kindly old man that America loves on his 74th birthday,” O’Neill said.

“This kindly gentleman, this old man. The American people are mesmerized by him. But I think he should come out and say what he’s asking for.”

O’Neill took issue with Reagan’s assertion that current high deficits were caused by “nearly 50 years of government’s living beyond its means.”

“He made somewhat of a simple statement. It was very clever rhetoric. But it covered up the facts,” O’Neill said. “Mr. President . . . do not point the finger at the distant past, when you yourself have so much responsibility for these deficits resting on your own shoulders.”

Tripled Debt

When Reagan took office, O’Neill said, the national debt was just over $900 million. “By his own budget projections . . . the national debt will be $3 trillion when he leaves office, triple what it was when the ‘Reagan revolution’ began,” the Speaker said.

O’Neill also accused Reagan of having “a touch in his heart” that makes him “unfair to the poor of America, to the blacks of America and to other segments of America.”

O’Neill, a sharp critic of Reagan during the President’s first term, subdued his criticism after Reagan’s 49-state sweep. Last month, O’Neill openly praised Reagan as the “most popular” President he’d ever known and vowed to do nothing to block his programs from coming to the House floor.

Reagan’s speech to the joint House-Senate session, in which he called for a “Second American Revolution,” was “one of his better performances,” O’Neill said. “No one was in a mood to be critical of a man on his 74th birthday. But the revolution he’s talking about is more words than it is deeds.

“You’re a wonderful man and you give a wonderful performance, but let’s stop talking about generalities,” O’Neill said as if he were directing his remarks to the President.

State of the Union, Pages 12 and 14-17.