President Orders First Round of Spending Cuts : Trims $11.7 Billion to Satisfy Gramm-Rudman Law, Vows ‘Different, Better Approach’ Next Year

President Reagan, complying with the new Gramm-Rudman law, Saturday ordered the first round of across-the-board federal spending cuts, totaling $11.7 billion, to go into effect next month.

But in his regular weekly radio address, the President said the budget he will propose to Congress for next year will take “a different and better approach to meeting the . . . deficit targets.”

Administration sources disclosed that Reagan’s fiscal 1987 budget, which he will submit to Congress on Wednesday, will call for less than $25 billion in domestic spending reductions--far less than had once been feared would be necessary to meet the Gramm-Rudman’s deficit ceiling for that year.

Still Resists Tax Hike

Reagan hopes that his proposed budget for fiscal 1987, which begins Oct. 1, will be adopted by Congress and head off a second round of across-the-board spending cuts. However, both congressional Republicans and Democrats are already insisting that Reagan will have to accept higher taxes and a reduction in his defense buildup.

In his address, the President vowed to resist the pressure. “Any tax increase the Congress sends me will be DOA--dead on arrival,” Reagan said, replying in the same words to lawmakers who have said his own 1987 budget will be moribund by the time it reaches Capitol Hill. And Reagan is expected to ask Congress for an inflation-adjusted 3% increase in military spending for 1987.

For the immediate future, Reagan said he is confident the Administration can impose next month’s rigid across-the-board cuts on federal agencies “while maintaining government services.”

Other federal officials, however, have told Congress that some crucial activities may be seriously impaired.

Jack W. Roe, deputy executive director of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said the cuts will limit the NRC’s ability to guarantee the safe operation of the nation’s nuclear power plants and the safe disposal of its nuclear wastes. “The NRC will be performing less regulatory oversight activities, not more,” he said.

Reagan said his 1987 budget will “propose to reform or eliminate the programs and activities that are either too big or that shouldn’t exist at all.” Among its $25 billion in trims, it is expected to call for the abolition of such federal operations as the Small Business Administration, mass transit grants and Amtrak rail subsidies and for cutbacks in aid for college students and government-supported home mortgages.

In addition, the budget will propose about $13 billion in miscellaneous savings measures. These include proposals to sell certain government assets such as the Bonneville Power Administration, which supplies low-cost electrical power to the Northwest and California; to impose higher fees on users of various government services, and to prevent the existing 16-cent-a-pack cigarette tax from dropping to 8 cents, as now scheduled.

Altogether, the White House now estimates that a total of only $38 billion in deficit-reduction measures will be required in fiscal 1987 to comply with the Gramm-Rudman law, which sets a $144-billion ceiling on the 1987 deficit.

Earlier Projection

The White House had earlier projected a need for $50 billion to $60 billion in cuts. But that was before it had taken into account the continuing impact of the $11.7-billion worth of across-the-board cuts that will take effect March 1.

Some programs, including Social Security, are exempt from those spending cuts, but all other domestic programs will be trimmed by 4.3%, and many military activities will be cut by 4.9%. This year Reagan was given special permission to shield some defense programs, and he chose to protect troop levels and the “Star Wars” anti-missile defense program from cuts.

As required by the Gramm-Rudman law, Reagan followed the spending limitations outlined last month by the General Accounting Office. Arguing that the GAO is an arm of Congress, the Reagan Administration is challenging this process in court on grounds that only the executive branch can administer federal laws. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals is expected to issue a decision soon, but the constitutionality of the law will ultimately be settled later this year by the Supreme Court.

Compromise Sought

Republican senators, fearful that Reagan’s 1987 budget formula will not fly in Congress and eager to avoid a repetition of last year’s protracted budget struggle, have begun an effort to block Reagan’s top legislative priority--tax revision--unless he agrees to an early budget compromise.

In a letter circulated by Sen. Rudy Boschwitz (R-Minn.), members of Reagan’s own party are insisting that “action must be taken on the deficit before the Senate considers tax reform.”

And in the Democratic-controlled House, Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.) argued Saturday that Congress will not accept any budget at all unless it makes equal cuts from defense and domestic spending.

At a conference of House Democrats in White Sulphur Springs, W. Va., Aspin told reporters that “the only budget resolution that has a chance of passing is one that has a 50-50 split.” He added that Reagan has “got himself into a real jam on this damn thing and he deserves it.”