Democrats, Reagan Clash on Key Issues

Two days after appealing to Congress to address the nation’s problems in a bipartisan manner, President Reagan Thursday clashed with Democratic congressional leaders in a White House meeting that signaled storms ahead for the Administration in its dealings with the new Congress.

After the White House meeting--Reagan’s first with the congressional leaders of both parties this year--Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) reported that the Democrats were “coming on strong, talking about getting a trade bill out early and then really giving the President the business on the budget.”

Democrats have said that the $1-trillion budget Reagan has submitted would not achieve the deficit reduction targets that the Administration asserts it will reach.

For his part, Reagan said he would veto the $18-billion clean water bill, which has broad bipartisan support.

The meeting was portrayed by participants as a contentious, even “tense,” session, with the White House and Republicans on one side and the Democrats on the other.

Senate Majority Leader Robert C. Byrd (D-W. Va.) complained after the meeting that Reagan was cool to his idea for a summit meeting on the budget. He said the congressional leaders and the President should “sit down and stay there a while, give a little and take a little, and come out with a package in which you don’t clobber us and we don’t clobber you.”

Entering his seventh year in office, Reagan is facing for the first time a Congress in which Democrats hold majorities in both the House and the Senate--and in which the 1988 presidential elections will loom ever larger.

Dole, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, said as he emerged from the White House, “I think it’s the opening gun of 1988.”

Robert H. Michel (R-Ill.), the House minority leader, said the meeting was “very spirited” and “a bit tense” toward the end.

Vintage Reagan

He said that, when the defense budget was questioned, the President “responded in vintage Reagan, in no uncertain terms, reaffirming very strongly what his position was and how he intended to fight for that position.”

During the meeting, the Democrats were said to have told Reagan that they planned to push a major trade bill through the House by the end of April. Reagan contends that such a bill, which could result in higher tariffs on imported goods, would in turn damage U.S. prospects in world trade.

Dole reported that Reagan, “right up front,” said he would veto the clean water bill. Congress passed the measure last year and the President killed it by a pocket veto after Congress adjourned.

It was repassed in the new session by the House, on a vote of 406 to 6, and by the Senate, on a vote of 93 to 6. Both margins were sufficient to override the veto.

The measure, which Reagan has called a “budget-buster,” would pay for sewage treatment facilities and waterway cleanup over eight years.

Disputes Reagan’s Position

Byrd, who said the legislation “is not a budget-buster by any stretch of the imagination,” asserted that it called for lower expenditures than were being committed to fight water pollution when Reagan took office.

Despite the President’s remarks in his State of the Union message about the need for Congress and the Administration to work together, White House officials and congressional Democrats are observing no rhetorical truce.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that Democratic opponents of Reagan who were vociferous in their reactions during the speech Tuesday night were “a few old soreheads” and “hooters.”