Reagan Claims Voter Mandate on Arms, Taxes

President Reagan said Saturday that he had won a mandate in the November election to avoid both reductions in the Pentagon’s budget and increases in taxes, and he contended that his tax cuts have left “inflation and all the experts’ pessimistic predictions in the dust.”

“Already, we’re hearing old familiar voices telling us to slow down, prepare to slash the defense budget and raise taxes--all in the name of reducing projected budget deficits,” Reagan said in his weekly radio speech, delivered from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md. “Those arguments were rejected on Nov. 6. The single best deficit program is an all-out push for economic growth.”

Reagan’s message appeared to be directed at least in part to Congress, where leaders in both parties have criticized his proposal to increase defense spending while making sharp cuts in domestic programs.

In the broadcast Democratic response, Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.) accused Reagan of having “glossed over a raging economic firestorm” on the nation’s farms. Reagan, he said, “either does not know or care, or both, about a major economic catastrophe happening now.”

Exon attributed these troubles to low farm prices, high production costs and “mismanaged government policies that . . . have destroyed international markets.”

But, in words illustrating a dilemma confronting Democrats, Exon said Reagan “is absolutely correct in his call for reducing federal expenditures and not increasing taxes to attack the budget deficit.” He said agriculture will bear “its fair share of the necessary cuts.”

In his radio talk, Reagan called for broadening presidential power to deal with economic problems. He asked for legislation allowing him to veto individual items in appropriation bills and eliminating restrictions on turning over to private enterprise commercial activities now performed by government.

“Once an appropriations bill has been signed into law, the President must spend all that money, even if he believes certain items are unnecessary,” Reagan said. “I continue to urge the Congress to give me the authority for line-item vetoes.

Legislative Restraints

“The executive branch has also been thwarted by legislative restraints from having its commercial-type activities--cafeterias and the like--handled by private businesses, which can run them less expensively than government,” Reagan said.

The President also charged that “our efforts to reduce bureaucracy through efficiencies and reductions in unnecessary personnel have been thwarted by congressionally mandated employment levels for certain programs. Our managers could get the job done just as well with fewer employees, but their hands are tied.”

The President also used the occasion to renew his plea for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget.

However, Reagan skirted the major difference dividing him from budget cutters in both political parties--defense spending--by noting, without any reference to his request for a 12.7% increase in military funding, that his budget calls for “an absolute freeze on overall government program spending at the fiscal ’85 level of approximately $804 billion, excluding debt service costs.”

The President acknowledged that “there’ll be differences of opinion on how to achieve this freeze.”

However, he said: “If Congress will work together with us in a spirit of cooperation and compromise, then together we can bring this budget under control without damaging the economy or endangering national security. I hope our energies will be spent finding ways we can reduce spending rather than finding reasons why we cannot.”