Potomac Pipe Dreams

With Congress trying to scale a Himalayan budget deficit without rope, pitons or even decent stand-ins for the stricken guide, President Reagan’s staff has sent a message of encouragement: “Press on. He is right behind you.”

The message misreads the constitutional role of Congress. It is a body of followers, deliberately structured to resist change. The office of President exists to force change as the need arises.

The words “in sickness and in health” do not appear in the presidential oath of office, and Reagan’s calm courage during and after his cancer surgery is all that a nation could reasonably expect from him. But it has a right to expect more from his staff than photogenic but sophomoric symbols like the Indian peace pipe that Donald T. Regan, chief of staff, carried to Capitol Hill on Monday.

Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who got the pipe as a birthday present, probably would have preferred a collection of scalps. There was still a chance for a budget resolution that would make a noticeable dent in the deficit when the White House intervened to add bickering among Republicans to disagreements between Republicans and Democrats over the best way to cut the deficit.

First the White House backed away from a plan to freeze Social Security payments for a year, leaving members of the Republican-led Senate who had voted for the freeze to face the music at home alone. Regan followed up with a speech saying that Congress was afraid to deal with the problem.

In the meantime, appropriations committees, with only two months to go before the beginning of the next fiscal year, are sending spending bills to the floors of the House and the Senate with no ceilings to guide them and with the President’s own forces supporting help for debt-ridden farmers that would add as much as $8 billion to the White House’s own budget proposal.

The most deplorable thing about watching Washington fall apart under pressure is that there are ways out. Better management of the Pentagon would provide more real defense at less cost. The House and Senate were only a few billion dollars apart on a program that would have trimmed about $250 billion from deficit spending over the next three years. Billions could be saved by shaving federal pension plans to put them more in line with private pension plans--something that neither the White House nor Congress has been anxious to do.

Tax increases--on energy, for example, to maintain an incentive for avoiding waste if prices drop further in the unstable oil business--could be added to bring deficits down even more.

All these are prudent measures, well within the grasp of Congress and the ability of the economy to absorb changes in tax codes. But it will take firm guidance from the White House to tie them together. Time wasted lugging peace pipes around Washington does no service either to the nation or to the stricken guide.