Revolution Vs. Reality

In one sense the Reagan Revolution finally ran aground on the hard rock of reality on Thursday. The President’s $1.1-trillion budget for fiscal 1989 is pretty much the sort of pragmatic, meet-Congress-halfway budget that Jimmy Carter or Gerald R. Ford might have presented. The Administration at last made some tough choices about defense spending on its own. The President reversed his big cuts of last year in education programs. Spending for basic science and space again has some sort of priority. There is a substantial boost for the nation’s beleaguered air-traffic-control system, seven years after the President decimated the system by firing the air-traffic controllers.

On the other hand, of course, the legacy of the Reagan Revolution lurks in the background: a trillion-dollar monster that will land squarely on the shoulders of the President who takes office on Jan. 20, 1989. The massive federal debt compiled during the Reagan years, and the ongoing annual deficits, will help shape federal budgets for years to come.

The new President will face the awesome prospect of raising taxes as soon as he takes office or being forced to make repeated painful budget decisions while long-neglected domestic needs continue to suffer. Either alternative could make the nation’s 41st Chief Executive a one-term President, whether he is a Republican or a Democrat.

Reagan of course was hemmed in by his two-year budget summit agreement forged with the Democratic-controlled Congress late last year, after the October stock market crash. The pactprovided for some new taxes and strict limits on spending increases. For the first time in years, the budget reached Capitol Hill on Thursday without prompting a chorus of “Dead on Arrival.”

The fact that this is a presidential election year cannot be overlooked. This was confirmed when Education Secretary William J. Bennett said, “The President decided to make education a priority . . . . We think it’s good politics.” Spending for space ventures always has been pretty popular with Americans, too. And Reagan budget proposals on acid rain and toxic cleanup may help the Republicans blunt criticism from environmentalists even though the nation is going without a strong new Clean Air Act for the eighth consecutive year, in part because of the lack of Administration support.

There is irony in the President’s statement that deficit reduction must be paramount. His Administration has compiled new federal debt of nearly $1.4 trillion, largely through tax cuts that most benefited the wealthy and through the pursuit of every military toy that the defense Establishment wanted while many worthy domestic programs were starved. There is irony, too, in the President’s budget-message boast about how healthy the economy has become during his presidency. The primary reason that the President was forced into presenting a realistic budget for 1989 was that the nation seemed to be poised on the brink of economic disaster last fall.

The Reagan Administration got caught between a rock and a hard place. That did not leave much room for maneuvering.