Don’t Reject Budget Until ‘Ink’s Dry,’ Congress Urged

Budget Director James C. Miller III today pleaded with Congress not to reject President Reagan’s 1988 budget “before the ink is dry,” but Democratic leaders voiced skepticism about the trillion-dollar spending plan.

Miller told the Senate Budget Committee that the new Reagan budget, through a combination of $42 billion in spending cuts and new no-tax revenues, would reduce the federal deficit to $108 billion.

But Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) disputed the Administration’s calculations, claiming that the measures proposed in the new budget would fall far short of the $108-billion deficit level for 1988 that is specified in the Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing law.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that some gymnastics with the arithmetic to reach this year’s target won’t help much if we don’t reach our ultimate goal,” Chiles told Miller.

And Chiles said some of the “new revenues” proposed by the Administration would be an unfair burden on certain Americans.

Mortgage User Fees

For instance, Chiles said that proposed user fees for Federal Housing Administration mortgage loans could cost the typical new home buyer $1,600 more in out-of-pocket money at down-payment time.

Chiles raised the possibility of an income tax surcharge on all Americans that would be lifted when the budget was balanced. But Miller argued: “I think ordinary tax increases would have more of a restraining effect on aggregate economic activity than the kinds of changes that we are proposing.”

A tax increase, less than a year after Congress completed work on major tax overhaul, “would be a big mistake,” Miller said.

Miller and the panel’s Democratic members sparred over provisions of the new budget. And Sen. J. James Exon (D-Neb.) asked the budget director what he had meant by suggesting publicly that the spending plan might be subject to “demagoguery” on Capitol Hill.

“I have a concern that the President’s budget in the past year or so has not received the respectful analysis and evaluation that it deserves,” Miller said.

Asks Serious Approach

Miller told the panel that the Administration wants its proposals to be taken seriously.

“We in the Administration want to work with you. We believe, however, that in turn members of Congress should evaluate the President’s proposals on their merits, rather than criticizing the budget, as some have done, even before the ink is dry,” Miller said.

Meanwhile, the budget was being dissected and analyzed by a variety of research and special-interest groups across the spectrum of political ideologies.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a generally liberal, nonprofit research organization, said that of the $18.7 billion in spending cuts proposed by the President, $6.7 billion would come out of programs targeted for low-income Americans.