Stockman Says Only Alternative Is ‘Whopping Tax Increase’ : Senate Backing of Budget Package Seen

Budget Director David A. Stockman predicted Sunday that the Republican-run Senate will eventually approve the deficit reduction compromise its leaders negotiated with the White House because it is the only alternative to “a whopping big tax increase.”

Stockman made it clear that he shares President Reagan’s antipathy to fighting the deficit with a tax boost, but said it was “evident to anybody who’s sensible about our fiscal circumstances” that continued government deficits on the order of $200 billion a year will impose an “enormous, staggering national debt” on future generations.

“If we’re unwilling to cut back substantially on the spending side of that equation, then some day we’re going to have to have staggering increases in taxes to close the gap,” the budget director said during an appearance on the NBC broadcast “Meet the Press.”

Noting that Reagan “believes strongly that raising taxes is the wrong way to go,” Stockman predicted that the Senate will endorse the proposed compromise “if we make our case strongly--and the President is going to take his to the American people.”

Stockman’s comments are part of the preliminary skirmishing over the compromise plan to lop $52 billion out of planned spending in fiscal 1986. The package, which was agreed to April 4 by Reagan and Senate Republican leaders, is scheduled for a vote next week in the Senate, which returns today from its Easter recess.

‘Very Tough’ Vote

Reminded that 20 of the 53 GOP senators face reelection fights in 1986 that will make them reluctant to trim popular programs, Stockman conceded that it will be a “very tough” vote. But he predicted that Republicans will back the President because it will be impossible to maintain continued economic growth “unless we get this budget under control.”

“I think that they will see that the larger gain stems from voting through this big package and keeping the economy on track,” Stockman said.

House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) indicated during an appearance with Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.) on the CBS program “Face the Nation” that if the Administration package survives its Senate test, it will face the prospect of amendments in the Democratic-controlled House.

Advised by Armstrong, a member of the Senate Budget Committee, that Republicans were “ready to look at” Democratic suggestions for improvement of the compromise, Wright replied: “You’ll have that opportunity, I assure you.”

“We will come forward with a program,” Wright said. “We’ll try to make it equitable and try to make the sacrifices a little more evenly shared. But . . . the overriding obligation for both of us is to find ways fairly and equitably to reduce these staggering Reagan deficits.”

By contrast with the partisan wrangling generated by the deficit-reduction package, there was bipartisan agreement from sponsors of competing legislative proposals who appeared on ABC’s “This Week With David Brinkley” that tax reform can and should win approval at the current session of Congress.

Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.), who has offered one of the plans, drew encouragement from President Reagan’s pledge on Saturday to introduce a new Administration tax-reform plan next month.

He said he was “very optimistic” that the upshot will be “a new tax system for 1986.”

Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.), co-sponsor with Sen. Bill Bradley (D-N.J.) of a competing plan, agreed. Neither ventured a prediction as to the precise form of the final proposal.