White House Ready for Budget Talks : Deficit: OMB Director Richard G. Darman says ‘a couple of very important people’ don’t want to negotiate.

White House budget Director Richard G. Darman said today that the Bush Administration is ready to begin serious negotiations with Congress on developing a bipartisan plan for reducing the deficit.

“We’d be pleased to start at 10 o’clock tonight, after the President’s speech,” Darman told the Senate Budget Committee, referring to the State of the Union address.

Sen. J. Bennett Johnston (D-La.) reminded Darman that at this time a year ago, the Administration was encouraging such negotiations, not just expressing a willingness to participate.

If there has been a change of heart, Darman replied, it is because “a couple of very important people have said they don’t want to negotiate.” He did not identify them but apparently was referring to some congressional leaders.

Darman, director of the Office of Management and Budget, expressed frustration that after many hours of criticism from opponents of the Administration’s budget policies, “I have yet to see . . . a detailed plan” from those critics.

For the second straight day, the Administration’s 1991 budget was hammered by Democratic lawmakers as unrealistic, too heavy on military spending and dependent on overly optimistic economic projections. Darman defended the budget and projections, as did several Republican members of the Senate Budget Committee.

“This is the most realistic budget that has been submitted by a President in five years,” said Sen. Phil Gramm (R-Tex.).

“You are not dealing with people who are totally out of bounds” in trying to forecast how the economy will behave in the coming months, Darman said Tuesday.

Testifying before the House Budget Committee, Darman rejected criticism from Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chairman of the panel, that the new budget relies on rosy assumptions about unemployment, inflation and economic growth.

Darman said the Administration compiled “an amazingly accurate record” in making its forecasts last July. “This represents not just wisdom but some luck,” he added.