Budget Pending in House ‘Unacceptable’ to Reagan

President Reagan said Tuesday that a fiscal 1987 budget pending in the House that would cut $35 billion from his Pentagon spending request is “totally unacceptable.”

Presdential spokesman Larry Speakes also quoted the President as telling GOP congressional leaders during a White House meeting that the House package “represents the classic Democratic budgetary solution that slashes defense, raises taxes and protects unneeded domestic programs.”

On Capitol Hill, Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), chairman of the House Budget Committee, dismissed as “mindless poppycock” Administration attacks on the spending plan backed by Democratic leaders.

“The White House is screaming . . . that somehow the Russians are coming up the Potomac. That’s crazy,” Gray said.

The House was set to begin debate today on the proposed $994-billion budget blueprint for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1. Final action is expected Thursday.

The Democratic majority on the House Budget Committee last week approved the package, which would reduce the President’s $320-billion military spending request to $285 billion. The Senate approved a budget two weeks ago that pegged the Pentagon budget at $301 billion.

House Republican leaders Tuesday were drafting a substitute budget, with the goals of increasing military spending and reducing the tax increase passed by the Democrat-controlled budget committee.

Speakes quoted Reagan as saying, “I have some serious reservations about some aspects of the Senate budget resolution, but the House resolution is totally unacceptable.”

Last week, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger attacked the House package, saying it would “unravel the greatly improved U.S. military posture” and “destroy the recent and impressive momentum we have made in rearming America.”

The pending House budget proposal contains the same level of revenues as the package passed by the Senate.

Each adds $7.3 billion to the $5.9 billion in minor revenue increases--such as increased user fees--that the President proposed in February.

However, the House package would place $4.7 billion of the additional revenue in a vaguely defined trust fund to be applied to deficit reduction.