House Democrats Near Accord on Budget

House Budget Committee Democrats, struggling behind closed doors to come up with a fiscal 1987 budget in response to the spending plan produced last week by the GOP-led Senate, neared agreement Tuesday on a budget that would slash defense spending and raise taxes to reduce the deficit, panel members said.

One potential obstacle, however, is House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O’Neill Jr. (D-Mass.), who expressed strong reservations about the political wisdom of Democrats advocating higher taxes without a guarantee of support from House Republicans.

Rep. Marvin Leath (D-Tex.) told reporters after the committee session that Democrats were moving close to an agreement that would raise about the same amount of revenues as the Senate-passed plan--about $13 billion, some of which is likely to come from new taxes.

Defense Outlay $282 Billion

Leath said that the package being considered by the committee Democrats also would hold new defense spending commitments to about $282 billion, which is $19 billion lower than the amount approved by the Senate and almost $40 billion lower than President Reagan requested.

The additional taxes would be used to reduce the deficit, Leath said, adding that it could yield a deficit $10 billion lower than the Senate package would produce. But other committee members, speaking on the condition they not be identified, called that an optimistic projection.

By comparison, Senate leaders contend that their own combination of taxes and spending cuts would reduce the projected deficit by about $40 billion, which is enough to reach the $144-billion target set by the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law.

House Budget Committee Chairman William H. Gray III (D-Pa.) refused to give any details of the plan and cautioned: “Nothing is final. . . . Everything is wide open.”

The committee Democrats reportedly plan to discuss the package with O’Neill today and may call the panel into session to officially begin its budget deliberations.

O’Neill Skeptical

Although some House Democrats have said that the Republican-led Senate’s overwhelming approval of taxes in its budget has defused the potential use of the issue against Democrats, O’Neill remained skeptical.

“I want to take from the President the idea that the Democrats are spenders and that the Democrats are taxers,” O’Neill told reporters. “We’re trying to get away from that image. That’s the image that hurt us in the last election,” when President Reagan used Democratic presidential nominee Walter F. Mondale’s promise to raise taxes as a political bludgeon against Democrats.

House Minority Leader Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.) has opposed raising taxes beyond the relatively modest $6 billion in new revenues proposed in Reagan’s budget. An aide said that Michel’s position on the issue is “fairly rigid, but he never shuts the door on any option.”

GOP Position on Taxes

In particular, the aide said, the GOP position on taxes could hinge on “how the other components of the budget shape up”--a suggestion that Republicans might go along with a tax increase if it were used to spare defense spending from the dramatic cuts that have been proposed by some Democrats.

However, the aide to the Republican leadership said that Democrats are likely to find that public support for deficit reduction “is not strong enough to sustain them from (double-barreled criticism) on the tax issue and the defense issue as well.”