Budget Games Over: Bush : Will Press Compromise on Deficit

President Bush said today that disturbing new figures on the federal deficit show that the “time for game playing is over,” and he pledged to increase pressure for a compromise on new taxes and budget cuts.

“We’re getting to a crunch,” Bush told a group of magazine publishers at the White House. “It is absolutely essential that something be done. I will do my part.”

He spoke a day after the White House Office of Management and Budget boosted its estimate of the fiscal 1991 deficit to $168.8 billion--up $10 billion from the Administration’s estimates a month ago and up sharply from the $100.5 billion it estimated in January.

The projected deficit is more than $100 billion above the target of $64 billion set by the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law.

Congressional budget negotiators had given mixed reviews to the Administration’s gloomy assessment--some saying it would help prod slow-moving talks and others suggesting the opposite.

“Given yesterday’s news,” Bush said today, “ . . . the time for game playing is over. And we have to get something done that is not only a sound budget agreement but is seen by the American people to be a sound budget agreement.”

Bush said that although he was still “fairly optimistic” such a pact could be reached, it will require both spending cuts and tax increases.

Bush earlier this month abandoned his 1988 “no new taxes” campaign pledge.

The President said he was fearful “about the confidence in the marketplace” should a budget deal not be struck.

“We will be pushing in the next couple of weeks, and the meter is running,” Bush said.

Budget summit talks between Administration officials and congressional leaders enter their third month this week.

The Administration coupled the release of the revised figures Monday with a bleak assessment of how a $100-billion cut in services--which would be triggered this fall by the Gramm-Rudman law in the absence of a budget accord--would affect government services.

The scenarios included eliminating half the nation’s 2 million active military personnel, reducing hours of operation at the nation’s airports and halting increased drug interdiction efforts at the country’s borders.

No one was willing to say they believed that such dramatic cuts would be allowed to stand for very long. As recently as last fall, the Gramm-Rudman law required spending cuts that were rolled back as soon as negotiators worked out a budget deal.

But some lawmakers argued Monday that the new numbers illustrated a problem that had to be dealt with.

“The day of reckoning has arrived,” said Rep. Leon E. Panetta (D-Carmel Valley), chairman of the House Budget Committee.

Sen. Pete V. Domenici of New Mexico, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the details should send a message to lawmakers who have opposed the budget talks.

“They now have a clear alternative,” Domenici said. “If it is not an economic summit, it is this,” a $100-billion automatic spending cut.