Speech Tonight Intended to Revive Support for Buildup : Reagan to Air Defense Funds Arguments

President Reagan, facing a combative Congress and worried by mounting evidence that public support for his massive defense buildup has begun to fade, will call on the nation to stay the course on Pentagon spending in a nationally televised speech tonight.

Reagan will argue that the 8% real increase in defense spending he has requested for next year’s budget is not excessive, even though he has also proposed major reductions in domestic spending programs, according to Administration sources. He is only spending 6% of the country’s gross national product on defense, Reagan will say, compared with 9% of GNP consumed by the Pentagon budget during John F. Kennedy’s Administration more than 20 years ago.

Signal to Capitol Hill

The speech, scheduled for 5 p.m. PST, is intended as a signal to Capitol Hill that Reagan will fight for his $311.6-billion defense budget, despite the intense pressures created by the Gramm-Rudman balanced budget law. But White House officials recognize that it is likely to be a losing battle unless Reagan can halt the current erosion in public support for defense spending.

Administration officials pointed out that this is the first time Reagan has devoted a prime-time television speech exclusively to the defense budget and that his address tonight reflects their awareness that the President’s full political clout must be devoted to the issue.

Viewing Alternative

“The weight of the presidency is needed if there is going to be any hope at all for a workable defense budget,” said a senior Pentagon official, gleefully noting that with the speech carried by all three major commercial television networks, “the only alternative to watching him is to watch an old movie” on an independent station.

A Los Angeles Times poll taken in November, two weeks before Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev in Geneva, showed that 54% of those responding believed the United States could spend less on defense while only 35% favored more defense spending. Providing further evidence of that trend, a recent private GOP survey showed an overwhelming majority of respondents, 66% to 22%, think the United States is now stronger than the Soviet Union.

A White House official, assessing the reasons for this loss of support, said that the summit meeting’s focus on arms control had accelerated the decline in public backing because people had “a natural inclination” to think there could be “a pause” in the buildup while the arms-control talks were going on.

Reagan’s Arguments

In his speech, Reagan will argue that a strong U.S. defense brought the Soviets back to the negotiating table and that the buildup must be maintained if he is to win concessions from Gorbachev when the two leaders meet again later this year.

The wave of revelations about Pentagon abuses in purchasing excessively costly hammers and toilet seats have also taken their toll on public support, the White House official said. Further embarrassments could be in order when a blue-ribbon commission on defense, headed by former Deputy Defense Secretary David Packard, reports to Reagan on Friday on the so-called “horror stories” of waste in the Pentagon budget.

Reagan’s prime-time talk also will attempt to counter a growing public perception, as measured by GOP polls, that his defense buildup is complete. The President, armed with graphs and charts, will make several “us and them” comparisons between the superpowers in an effort to prove that this country has not overtaken the Soviets, particularly in conventional weaponry.

And he will compare his record on halting the spread of communism around the world with the record of his predecessors, principally former President Jimmy Carter, during the 1970s.

“We haven’t lost a country in six years, but you can’t rest on your oars,” said a senior White House official. “We’ve just started back up the stairs,” he said. “If you start swiping at the defense budget, you risk throwing all that away.”