Reagan Takes Budget Fight to the Public : Calls Criticized Compromise Package a ‘Taxpayer Protection Plan’

President Reagan, facing a storm of opposition to his budget compromise with Senate Republicans, fought back Tuesday with one of his most formidable political weapons: a personal, upbeat appeal for public support.

While Democrats were focusing attention on the hardship they said the package of $52 billion in spending cuts would impose on Social Security recipients, farmers, students and others, Reagan dubbed the compromise “the taxpayer protection plan.”

‘Budget Behemoth’

The President, speaking at the White House before 175 members of a group called the Deficit Reduction Coalition, portrayed the package as “a historic opportunity, a chance to finally get control of the budget behemoth and make government once again the servant of the people, rather than the other way around.”

White House officials said that the coalition included representatives of business, agriculture, health care, ethnic groups and conservative organizations.

Reagan said that he hoped to turn around the “doom and gloom” view of the deficit and added: “Even our greatest problems are, as (industrialist) Henry Kaiser once said, opportunities in work clothes.”

The budget package is the product of weeks of White House negotiations with Senate Republican leaders, who said Tuesday that Reagan’s popularity offers their best hope of passing it next week when it reaches the full Senate.

Pentagon Increase Halved

In reaching the compromise, Reagan agreed to give up half the spending increase he had sought for the Pentagon in return for keeping almost all the domestic spending cuts he proposed.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said that Reagan is “the ace in the hole . . . . He carried 49 states (in the 1984 election) because people like him and respect his leadership.”

Reagan has pledged “as strong an effort on the budget resolution as you have seen from the White House on a legislative issue in the past four years,” said Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.).

Others were not so confident that Reagan’s popularity can overcome stiff opposition to many of the proposed cuts--particularly the proposed limit on cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients.

After a luncheon Tuesday at which White House Budget Director David A. Stockman tried to build Senate GOP support for the package, Sen. John H. Chafee (R-R.I.) told reporters that “some corrections” might be made in the package before it goes to the Senate floor.

Politically Painful Votes

Dole has scheduled 50 hours of debate on the budget. During that time, Democrats are expected to offer numerous amendments that will force the Senate’s 53 Republicans--almost half of whom face reelection in 1986--to cast politically painful votes on individual cuts.