Edwards Says Reagan’s Cuts Will Hurt Mothers

After President Reagan devoted most of his weekly radio talk Saturday to a Mother’s Day tribute, a Democratic spokesman responded with a broadcast charge that many mothers will be hurt by Administration-backed budget cuts approved early Friday by the Republican-run Senate.

Reagan, speaking from the White House, praised American mothers for fighting drunken driving and called attention to the work of his wife, Nancy, in organizing mothers against drug addiction. He said that his own mother, Nellie Reagan, was “truly a remarkable woman, ever so strong in her determination but always tender, always giving of herself to others . . . the greatest influence on my life.”

Social Security Freeze

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), speaking for the Democrats, opened a partisan attack on Reagan’s policies with a reminder to the President that the Senate’s compromise plan to cut $56 billion from the expected fiscal 1986 deficit includes a one-year freeze on Social Security cost-of-living increases, which he said will reduce benefits by $6 billion.

“The Senate Republican budget would mean that an additional 500,000 of America’s senior citizens would be below the official poverty line,” Edwards said. “Most of these new poor older Americans will be women, Mr. President, and many thousands mothers. Mr. President, on Mother’s Day have you forgotten about the grandmothers of America?”

In another area affected by the Senate plan, which is designed to cut spending by nearly $300 billion over the next three fiscal years, Edwards called on Reagan to remember “those working mothers who, because of your opposition, have no day-care centers to leave their children in a safe and healthy environment.”

Without referring to the fact that the $965-billion Senate budget compromise trimmed $17.7 billion from the Administration’s three-year military spending request and restored $15.7 billion cut by the Administration from domestic programs, Edwards questioned a provision that added an estimated $10 billion to $12 billion to Pentagon funding to keep pace with inflation.

Campaign Pledge Cited

“Is that fair,” he asked, “especially since you promised over and over again in the 1984 campaign that Social Security pensions, which play no part in the deficit, would not be cut?”

Edwards chided the President, who returned Saturday from a 10-day European trip, for failure to meet with a Soviet leader to “negotiate detente and arms reduction” and failure to heed critics who “disagree with your plan to overthrow militarily the government of Nicaragua.”

Edwards called the present federal tax code a “nightmare” and said it was “not fair that you are asking Social Security pensioners to take less, middle-income families to sacrifice, and yet many of the largest, richest and most powerful corporations in America get a free ride.”

He referred to an unidentified San Jose mother of three who he said made $12,000 in 1983 and still “paid more taxes than General Electric, Du Pont, Boeing and Texaco combined.”

“On Mother’s Day, remember her, too,” Edwards said.