Congress Approves $1-Trillion ’89 Spending Plan

The Senate Monday completed congressional action on a $1.1-trillion spending blueprint in record time but left the big issue of how to reduce massive and persistent budget deficits for the next President and a new Congress to decide in 1989.

On a vote of 58 to 29, the Senate endorsed a compromise package already approved by the House that carries out agreements made with President Reagan last November at an unprecedented budget meeting between Congress and the White House.

Adoption of the fiscal 1989 budget resolution--at the earliest date ever since the Congressional Budget Act was enacted in 1974--was hailed by Senate leaders as a major step toward bringing more order into a spending process that has been bogged down in political acrimony for several years.

Because the budget resolution does not have the binding effect of law, serving only as a guideline for Congress as it considers annual spending bills, it does not require Reagan’s signature.

Difficult Decisions

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) warned that the difficult decisions on cutting the federal deficit were put off until after the presidential elections.

“We achieved as much as political reality would permit,” he told the Senate. “The next Congress and the next Administration will face difficult choices. When you remove the veil of Social Security (fund) surpluses, our deficit problem is $200 billion a year as far as the eye can see.

“We’ve taken some steps in the right direction, but I’m afraid there’s miles to go before we sleep,” cautioned Chiles, who is retiring from the Senate this year.

Sen. William L. Armstrong (R-Colo.), who opposed the resolution, said that the government is running “enormous deficits . . . in a time of unparalleled prosperity” in the last six years. “And we’re just putting the whole problem off until after the election,” he added.

The nation’s first trillion-dollar budget is about $5 billion more than Reagan’s initial request and $44 billion above the previous year’s total. However, Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N. M.) said that federal spending is barely keeping up with rising prices.

“The entire growth will be zero real growth,” he said. “We will hardly grow as much as inflation.”

Performance of Economy

The resolution projects a budget deficit of $135.3 billion for the fiscal year starting next October, although private analysts believe that it may exceed that figure by $20 billion or more, depending on how the economy performs.

The compromise measure would put a $294-billion ceiling on military spending authority and would limit domestic agencies to $169.2 billion in outlays, with a ceiling of $16.1 billion for foreign aid. No new taxes would be imposed, except for those approved last year as part of a deficit-cutting agreement.

It would allow a 4% pay increase for federal civilian employes and members of the armed forces, along with $1.4 billion for AIDS research and education and $12.6 billion for expanded space exploration.

The budget would also provide a full cost-of-living increase for government benefit programs, including Social Security pensions, which was estimated at 4.2%.

Anti-drug programs, apparently irresistible in an election year, would be allocated $4 billion, and more funds could be earmarked if Congress and the President agree on a way to pay the bill.