Won’t Budge Further on Deficit Bill: Reagan

President Reagan’s spokesman said today that the Administration will not compromise further on an $18-billion deficit-reduction package pending in the House.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes said an amended version of the complicated measure passed by the Senate last week--after negotiations with Administration officials--is acceptable and would be signed by the President.

“However, if there are any changes, and I underscore any changes, which upset this compromise, the President’s senior advisers would recommend a veto,” Speakes told reporters.

House Democratic leaders have indicated they will press for a version previously passed by the House.

Speakes said, “We oppose the House version. We will not compromise further on this legislation. We want the members of Congress to understand that anything less than the Senate version will be a candidate for veto and that the advisers will be unanimous in recommending” that.

House Majority Leader Jim Wright (D-Tex.) said Monday that the amended legislation approved by the Senate was “unacceptable to a great many members of the House, maybe a majority.”

The measure would make permanent the 16-cent-a-pack federal tax on cigarettes and clear the way for the government to distribute about $2 billion in offshore oil revenues to the states.

Also included is a provision allowing tobacco farmers to write off nearly $1 billion in past loans.

Wright had said House leaders might try to send the earlier House version of the measure back to the Senate, possibly as early as today.

But Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) said if the House bounces the measure back to the Senate, “it would seem to me they don’t want” the legislation enacted.

“It gets a little silly after a while here,” Dole added.

The deficit-reduction portions of the legislation were required by the budget Congress adopted last August and should have been in place for the start of the fiscal year last Oct. 1, but squabbles among the House, Senate and White House have held up final action.

Originally, the legislation was to have provided three-year savings of about $74 billion. But as the bickering went on, many of the savings either were enacted in other legislation or diminished in value as time passed.

The bill now is worth about $6 billion a year in savings over the next three years.