House Democrats, Seeking to Recapture Initiative, Act on Balanced-Budget Plan

House Democratic leaders, conceding that Congress would soon pass some sort of balanced-budget plan, worked feverishly Thursday to develop an alternative to Senate legislation mandating an end to deficits by 1991.

The House Democrats sought to regain the political initiative from Senate Republicans by coming up with a proposal that would balance the budget “faster and more fairly” than the GOP-engineered plan approved by the Senate on Wednesday, California Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey) said.

Political Hot Potato

Panetta was appointed to a bill-writing task force set up by House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) to handle the political hot potato tossed at House Democrats by the Senate action.

The partisan struggle to forge a measure aimed at balancing the federal budget in the next decade--a goal seen widely as unattainable--continued to be pursued by House members and senators in efforts to escape political blame for rising federal deficits in a year before crucial congressional elections.

The Senate plan--attached to a bill raising the federal debt limit to $2 trillion--was passed Wednesday with broad bipartisan support, although it was pushed primarily by Republicans with the strong backing of President Reagan. The Senate gave final passage to the debt-limit bill Thursday on a 51-37 vote.

Wilson Votes Yes, Cranston No

California Republican Pete Wilson voted for the bill, and Democrat Alan Cranston voted against it.

The plan sent to the House would require $36 billion in budget trims each year for five years until the budget is in balance in 1991, with Social Security and government contracts generally exempted from cuts.

O’Neill denounced the Senate plan as “a political gimmick to protect the 22 Republican seats” up for reelection in 1986, when Democrats plan to hammer at the issue of massive deficits in bidding to recapture control of the Senate.

However, with Democratic leaders openly fearful of being accused by Republicans of fighting a plan to balance the budget, O’Neill predicted that some such plan would clear Congress soon.

“The deficit is eating us up,” he said. A “disaster” will hit the economy, he said, unless something is done to reduce red ink now accumulating at $200 billion a year.

Panetta indicated that the House Democratic alternative would force a balanced budget by 1990, a year sooner than the Senate plan.

Would Curb President

Moreover, he said, the alternative would cut defense and social programs much more equitably than the Senate plan and would give the President none of the additional budget-cutting powers proposed by the Senate.

The Democratic alternative will be presented in the next week or two to a Senate-House conference committee, which must resolve differences between the Senate’s debt-ceiling bill--with its balanced-budget amendment--and a House version without riders.