GOP Mandate ‘Squandered,’ Democrats Say

House Democratic leaders, trying to capitalize on the budget fight, declared today that President Reagan and the Republican Party “have squandered their mandate” from the 1984 election, while Democrats have turned around the negative perceptions of the party lingering from the GOP landslide last year.

House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. and other Democrats offered their upbeat assessment of themselves at a news conference.

O’Neill said Reagan won in a landslide last November on the basis of his personal popularity and because voters thought he had a “master plan” for cutting the federal deficit and continuing the defense buildup without raising taxes or tampering with Social Security.

Perceptions ‘Proven False’

Voters also viewed Democrats as committed to taxes and wasteful government and weak on defense, he said.

“Both those perceptions have been proven false,” O’Neill said. “It now is obvious that this Administration has no plan whatever for dramatically cutting the federal deficits.”

He accused the Republicans of producing a fiscal policy “that will haunt us for generations,” and blamed them for worsening unemployment. Those issues will aid the Democrats in next year’s election, he said.

House Majority Leader Jim Wright of Texas said the Democrat-controlled House has not only stayed within its own budget, but has passed eight of 13 appropriations bills this summer with spending totals $8.6 billion below the House budget resolution.

Substantial Cost Cuts

“We have succeeded in reducing the cost of government substantially below the requests of President Reagan’s budget,” Wright said.

Rep. Tony Coelho (D-Merced), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Reagan and the Republicans have failed.

“They have squandered their mandate because of their inability to reconcile campaign rhetoric with fiscal realities,” he said. “They won 49 states by saying everything was fine, just leave the economy alone. Now they can’t even govern.”