Democrats Set 6-City Blitz to Place Blame for Deficit

Frustrated House Democrats, almost silent in the budget debate until now, are setting out on an uphill drive to convince Americans that a very popular President is to blame for the gaping federal deficit--and, more important, for the painful cutbacks that will be needed to bring it under control.

Rather than focusing the debate on Capitol Hill, the House Budget Committee plans to seek local headlines across the nation through a six-city blitz of hearings on President Reagan’s proposed fiscal 1986 budget.

Although the rhetoric of Washington politicians has failed in past years to cool public support for Reagan, Democrats hope to make their case more effectively through the complaints of Kansas farmers, a Texas retiree, community activists in New York and a San Francisco transit official.

To help guarantee national media attention, they also will solicit testimony from some of the party’s better known personalities, including Mayor Edward I. Koch at Saturday’s first hearing in New York. The other hearings will be in Miami; San Francisco; Lansing, Mich.; Irving, Tex., and Atchison, Kan.

“Beginning Saturday, we will be going to the American people, explaining the Reagan budget to them and asking their views,” House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) said Thursday, the morning after Reagan’s upbeat State of the Union address. “He hasn’t been honest with the American people, and they haven’t asked him for honesty. The day of reckoning has come.”

‘Kindly Old Man’

Referring to Reagan as “a kindly old man,” O’Neill said: “I think it’s time for Americans, while they love this man, to open their eyes.”

O’Neill’s assault on Reagan was a drastic change from the subdued, almost conciliatory tone that House leaders have taken with the White House since the President’s overwhelming reelection victory three months ago. Senate Republicans, pushing to draft their own budget, have sharply criticized the continued military buildup envisioned in Reagan’s plan. But leaders in the House--the Democrats’ only bastion of strength in the federal government--have stayed in the background until this week.

Democrats realize, however, that they cannot afford to sit this one out. The battle over the budget--the first major political test of Reagan’s second term and perhaps the most important--could determine whether the Democrats can reestablish their party as the one with which the majority of Americans identify. The hearings will be their first salvo in a fight that is expected to absorb Congress for months.

‘Missed a Bet’

“We believe Congress has missed a bet in recent years (by disregarding the President’s budget as soon as it arrives on Capitol Hill), and we believe we ought to analyze the budget,” said California Rep. Vic Fazio (D-Sacramento), who is organizing the Budget Committee’s hearing Thursday in San Francisco. “We are intending to make the focus of the next several months the lack of fairness and equity in this President’s budget.”

But Rep. Robert T. Matsui, another Sacramento Democrat, warned: “We have to be careful bashing the President for being insensitive to the poor,” because Democrats are likely to be voting for many of the same cuts.

To some extent, the Democrats’ emerging strategy is simply an effort to protect themselves as Congress begins considering drastic reductions in the social programs their party traditionally has championed. Even if they could force Reagan to knuckle under to a military spending freeze--a prospect that seems increasingly unlikely--they still would have to cut about $30 billion in domestic spending to reach the $50-billion deficit-reduction goal that many believe is vital to keeping the economic recovery going.

Fixing Blame

One top strategist for the House Democratic leadership said Democrats are counting on the hearings to “ensure that if the cuts are adopted, the blame is fixed ahead of time” on Reagan.

Part of the Democrats’ problem is that they are nowhere near a consensus on what alternative they should offer for cutting the deficit. With that in mind, the House aide said, the hearings will be “a good holding action.”

Republicans say the approach Democrats are taking with the Budget Committee “road show” merely reflects political desperation. “This sounds to me like nothing more than a political exercise, a dog-and-pony show to drum up opposition to the President’s budget,” said California Rep. Bobbi Fiedler of Northridge, a Republican on the Budget Committee. “It’s exactly what (Democratic presidential nominee Walter F.) Mondale did--a lot of naysaying, and people are sick of that.”

Exercise Valuable

But Democrats say the exercise could be a valuable one. Howard Moses, who is organizing a hearing on agricultural policy in Kansas, said: “We would actually like to see these hearings be very positive as far as coming up with policy ideas. . . . We haven’t asked whether (witnesses) at the hearings are Democrats or Republicans.”

“But I’ll be frank with you,” added Moses, an aide to Rep. Jim Slattery (D-Kan.). “It would be tough to come up with someone from the agricultural sector who would be supportive of the Administration.”

The committee has scheduled two sessions--in Kansas and in Michigan--which will focus on the nation’s depressed agricultural economy at a time when Reagan has proposed slashing farm subsidies.

“We know what the problems are on the farms. You don’t have to go out there to find out,” said Rep. Delbert L. Latta of Ohio, the Budget Committee’s ranking Republican. “No matter where you go, you’ll find people who will say, ‘Don’t do anything in my backyard.’ ”