Say <i> Cheese</i>

President Reagan will send the nation’s first trillion-dollar budget to Congress on Jan. 5. That is $1,000,000,000,000. Much will be made about the staggering size of the figure. What is more important, however, is to analyze what is in the budget and what it will, or will not, do.

The Administration has leaked enough about the fiscal 1988 budget already to reach one conclusion: Like Swiss cheese, it is full of holes. In the past few years the Reagan budget has been declared dead on arrival in Congress. This year it is dead even before it is sent.

Thus the President would do well to accept the proposal of Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) and Rep. William H. Gray III (D-Pa.), chairmen of the congressional budget committees in 1987, to hold a budget summit meeting early in the year to discuss spending priorities.

The Administration has little to lose by consulting with Democratic leaders at the outset of the budget process. The alternative is to swallow congressional decisions later on, when the tough numbers must be crunched under deadline--a process that the President has deplored with great vigor in the past. Much of what the President is asking was rejected in prior years, even though Republicans controlled the Senate.

The new White House budget will contain a 3% real increase in defense spending and seeks a 17% reduction in domestic programs that already have been pared to the bone. It just will not fly.

A 3% defense boost may not sound like much. But defense outlays have gone from $157.5 billion to nearly $300 billion in just six years while discretionary domestic spending has declined from 25% of the budget to 17%. And what are we getting? A B-1B bomber program, for one, that is so poorly managed that the Air Force has had to withhold $300 million in payments to contractors because of shoddy work. Other weapon programs have been plagued with similar problems up to the point of total cancellation.

The President often has said that throwing money at social problems will not solve them. By the same measure, throwing money into rushed and duplicative weapon programs will not necessarily make the nation any more secure.

President Reagan has said that one of his top priorities this year will be reform of the budget process. Reform means nothing, however, unless Congress and the President can work together for a realistic spending program that meets national needs and reduces the deficit. The Chiles-Gray invitation is a good place to start.