Reagan Calls House Budget ‘Assault’ on U.S. Security

President Reagan, appealing for support for his own budget plan, called on voters Saturday to urge Congress to reject the “budgetary assault on national security” passed by the Democratic-controlled House and back the “responsible and fair” plan approved by the Republican-run Senate.

Reagan’s plea, made during his weekly radio address, was part of an Administration effort to get Congress to reach a budget settlement acceptable to the White House when it returns this week from its Independence Day recess.

Both houses of Congress approved plans last month to trim spending in fiscal 1986 by about $56 billion, but the plans follow different routes. The Senate would shave domestic programs and block scheduled Social Security cost-of-living adjustments while permitting a 4% rise in defense spending to compensate for inflation. The House would freeze military spending at current levels but would not change the Social Security increases.

Reagan charged in his broadcast from the presidential retreat at Camp David, Md., that the House budget “is simply not a serious document,” but rather a mixture of bookkeepers’ “gimmicks” and “an assault on defense” that is neither “proportionate nor fair.”

“At best, it could win a prize for creative bookkeeping,” he said. “Huge so-called savings are simply assumed or invented. Funds are juggled back and forth between accounts to show phony deficit reductions and billions of dollars of expenses are just wished away.”

Half of the House cuts would fall on defense, “which accounts for less than a third of total spending,” Reagan said. He maintained that the Pentagon spending freeze proposed by the House is “a drastic cut” that would mean that planned spending for research and development, construction and procurement would be reduced 19% for 1986, 23% for 1987 and 28% for 1988.

“If the House budget were adopted,” Reagan said, “it would deliver a severe blow to our national security.”

Administration officials are expressing private concern that the budget stalemate can undermine Reagan’s economic agenda. They are giving top priority to resolution of the deadlock but insist that this does not mean that the President’s tax reform program is being de-emphasized.

In the official Democratic response to Reagan’s speech Saturday, Rep. Mary Rose Oakar of Ohio said her party aims to curb Pentagon extravagance and safeguard Social Security benefits.

Democrats, she said, “want a quality defense, not a defense budget that pays contractors $600 for toilet seats and $7,000 for coffee pots.” She said Reagan and the Senate’s GOP majority “want to rob the senior citizens of their Social Security cost-of-living adjustment, which would put 400,000 seniors below the poverty level.”

In the President’s address, Reagan warned again that he would “veto any tax hike that comes across my desk, no matter how it’s disguised.” The statement apparently was made in response to a suggestion by House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) that new revenue could be gained if Congress increased the level of taxes on Social Security benefits paid to well-to-do Americans.

Since 1983, income taxes have applied to 50% of the benefits received by individuals with total incomes exceeding $25,000 or couples reporting over $32,000.

As Social Security is emerging as the principal stumbling block to compromise, Budget Director David A. Stockman has been exploring O’Neill’s plan to increase taxes on upper-bracket benefits and another proposal by Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) to bring state and local government employees under Social Security and Medicare coverage, as federal workers were two years ago.

Combined, the two ideas would achieve an estimated $17 billion in deficit reductions in the next three years, compared to the $21.9 billion in savings expected if Social Security cost-of-living adjustments are eliminated.