No Gimmicks, Budget Chief Tells Congress

President Bush’s chief budget strategist Richard G. Darman defended the Administration’s 1991 budget today against charges by congressional Democrats that it used gimmicks and lies to fool the public.

“This budget stinks and lies,” Rep. Marty Russo, an Illinois Democrat and senior member of the House Budget Committee, told Darman.

In a preview of the battle of the budget to come this year, Darman found the $1.23-trillion spending plan under attack for cutting defense too little, domestic spending too much and for not raising taxes.

Darman said he looked forward to negotiations with Congress and would prefer that they discuss a long-term solution to the deficit rather than a one-year plan.

“I do look forward to all proposals. We don’t want off the hook,” he told the committee’s first hearing on the budget.

Darman said the Democrats are being unfair to say Bush did not make politically difficult proposals. He cited a freeze on cost-of-living increases in retirement programs as one that would cost Bush public support.

Responding to the charge that it used gimmicks such as rosy economic forecasts to help cut the deficit, Darman said the White House forecast has been accurate for the past six months and continued the same outlook.

“Nobody wants to be associated with a lie,” he said.

“The problem I have in reviewing (the budget) is that it repeats a lot of problems that everyone recognized as basically game playing last year,” House Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta (D-Carmel Valley) said. “I think there’s a kind of conclusion that this is not a serious effort at trying to achieve deficit reduction,” he added.

“It’s almost regrettable that I should have to say this, but of course the President is serious, of course I’m serious,” Darman responded. “It’s a tremendous amount of work that’s gone into developing a budget like this. I believe it’s defensible on the merits.”

“I wish you would have taken that on some faith,” Darman noted. “If it weren’t serious, I sure wasted a lot of time.”

Panetta urged Bush to consider raising taxes. He promised that he would call on Democrats to discuss cuts in domestic social programs, known as entitlements because they go automatically to qualifying needy people.

“Defense reductions are on the table in a bipartisan way, and we ought to consider revenues and entitlements in a bipartisan way as well,” he said.

The Bush budget would cut the deficit to $63.1 billion in the year starting Oct. 1 but its reliance on a strong economy to produce more tax revenue is suspect, the Democrats said.

Bush’s budget limited Pentagon spending to $292.1 billion--higher than this year’s $286.8 billion, but 2% less than the total needed to stay even with inflation. Bush sought increases for expensive weapons systems such as $900 million more for the strategic defense initiative, but a cutback of 38,000 troops and the shutdown of dozens of military bases.

But Democrats complained Bush should have carved more out of the military.