Administration Seeks $300 Million While Asking Cuts in Social Programs : Congress Pressed to Finance Two New Presidential Jets

Even as President Reagan is demanding deeper cuts in social welfare programs, Administration officials are quietly pressing Congress for more than $300 million to buy two new wide-bodied jets for the President.

The Administration’s spending request for the new presidential planes is contained in an emergency spending bill that is being drafted by Congress to fund the government beyond midnight today. Reagan is threatening to veto the measure unless Congress trims the money designated for social programs.

Funding for the planes was at issue Wednesday when House and Senate negotiators met to reconcile their differences over the bill. The House-passed version provides $35 million to fund the initial steps toward purchase of the planes; the Senate bill contains $280 million for the actual purchase, as well as $20 million for research and development of new aircraft equipment.

Delivery in 1988

Air Force spokesman Maj. Michael B. Perini said the new planes would be ordered for delivery in late 1988, the final year of Reagan’s term. He said the Air Force intends to buy two wide-bodied jets--either McDonnell Douglas DC-10s or Boeing 747s. By some estimates, he added, the planes could cost as much as $400 million.

Earlier this year, according to sources, several White House officials toured the Boeing 747 outfitted for Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd in anticipation that the new Air Force One would be similar to Fahd’s plane.

The two new planes would be used to replace the existing Air Force One and its backup plane, both Boeing 707s. The President’s present plane has been in operation since August, 1972, and the backup plane since October, 1962. The backup craft is the same plane on which President Lyndon B. Johnson took the oath of office after John F. Kennedy was assassinated in 1963.

Air Force officials first proposed the purchase of new presidential planes in 1983, but Administration officials declined to request the money from Congress. White House officials said then that they did not want to buy a new plane for the President at the same time Reagan was cutting programs for the poor.

Request Quietly Submitted

Likewise, the Administration’s proposed budget for the current fiscal year did not include a request to Congress for new presidential planes. Instead, the Defense Department quietly submitted what was described by Senate members as an “unofficial” request for the planes outside the President’s budget.

White House spokesman Rusty Brashear insisted that the money was not requested by the President, but instead by Air Force officials who operate the President’s planes. But he acknowledged that the White House concurred with the request.

“If they think for safety and other reasons that we need it, then we do too,” said Brashear. “We think it’s OK.”

A staff aide to the Senate Appropriations Committee said that the White House funneled the request through the Air Force as “a back-door way of doing business” to relieve Reagan of the embarrassment of requesting the money himself.

More Seats on Plane

Although the Air Force design specifications call for more than 30 additional seats on each new plane, Brashear insisted that it has nothing to do with the desire of an increasing number of White House aides to travel with the President. “It is not intended to take more staff along,” he said.

The current Air Force One seats 10 crew members and 59 other passengers, while the new planes each would have space for 23 crew members and 80 passengers. In addition, according to Perini, the new planes would have a variety of rooms that do not exist on the present plane, including an office, a state room and a dressing room for the President as well as a conference room and a medical facility.