Plan $30 Billion Over Target on Debt, Gray’s Analysis Contends

Contrary to White House claims, the budget proposal presented Wednesday to Congress by President Reagan is not likely to meet deficit-reduction targets established under the new balanced-budget law, the chairman of the House Budget Committee said Wednesday.

Chairman William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) told reporters that the budget plan underestimates by $15 billion the amount the Pentagon would spend if it were allowed to make all the new commitments the Administration has requested.

Moreover, he said, the plan relies on “slightly optimistic” assumptions about the economy’s performance this year. A more realistic assessment, Gray added, would add $14 billion to the deficit.

Mandated by Law

Gray’s analysis, if correct, would suggest that Reagan’s budget is almost $30 billion over the $144-billion target set under the budget-balancing law, known as Gramm-Rudman for its sponsors, Sens. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.) and Warren B. Rudman (R-N.H.). Unless Congress and Reagan ultimately agree on a budget plan that comes within $10 billion of that goal, they would be forced under the law to accept wide-ranging and painful automatic spending cuts.

It was clear as Reagan’s budget reached Capitol Hill that its chances of acceptance by Congress were almost nil.

Even Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), who will lead GOP efforts to shape a budget package on Capitol Hill, told Administration Budget Director James C. Miller III at a hearing before the committee that Congress will balk at the sharp domestic spending cuts proposed by Reagan.

Despite the Administration’s vow to oppose higher taxes, Domenici said: “We need a solution that will get a majority in the House, the Senate and from you and our President. That solution, in my judgment, will need a revenue component. . . . Taxes could be the glue that binds the package together.”

Only with new taxes, Domenici suggested, could Congress produce a budget that contains “a defense increase in the name of responsibility . . . (and) many domestic programs in the name of humanity.”

‘Unbalanced Proposal’

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.) added that “an accommodation,” or compromise, would be a better alternative than the “mindless across-the-board reductions” required by Gramm-Rudman and the Administration’s “unbalanced proposal.”

Democrats were more blunt in their criticism and one, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Les Aspin (D-Wis.), said that the budget was “DBA--dead before arrival.”

Many in Congress have expressed hope that the threat of the Gramm-Rudman cuts would force an ultimate “grand compromise” between the White House and Congress, but Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) told Miller that the Administration budget plan is “no way to start a conversation.”

Despite the fact that the budget has little chance of being enacted, leading Democrats plan to draw as much attention as they can to the spending priorities that Reagan has outlined, in hopes of igniting public criticism of the budget’s proposal to increase military spending at the expense of popular domestic programs.

The House Budget Committee, for example, plans a nationwide series of public hearings on the budget during next week’s congressional recess.

House Vote Vowed

The Democratic House leadership also has vowed to bring the White House budget to a vote on the House floor, hoping for a repeat showing of a vote two years ago, when the Administration budget received only one vote, from Rep. Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.).

“Today we received the boomerang budget, the one that comes back to hit you,” House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.) said. “I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that his budget receives a fair and full hearing before the country and before the Congress.

“We will help him explain that America’s top priority is to get to Tokyo in two hours flat,” O’Neill added, making a sarcastic reference to Reagan’s proposal in Tuesday night’s State of the Union address for research into a high-speed, airborne “Orient Express.”

Sen. Howard M. Metzenbaum (D-Ohio) added: “It’s going to be very difficult for the American people to understand a budget that spends more for military bands than it does for economic development grants.”

House Republicans said they plan to begin drafting their own budget alternative, in part to diffuse Democratic criticism of the GOP plan.

“The nation would be much better served if we in Congress would quickly turn our energies to development and passage of a budget resolution with bipartisan support,” said Rep. Lynn Martin (R-Ill.), a member of the House Budget Committee.