Archive: Reagan for the Defense

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The Democratic leadership used various parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that the budget plan it had worked out would be considered as a whole; the only amendment they would permit was a substitute of Reagan's proposed tax and spending package. But no Republican was willing to introduce the Reagan version of the budget on the floor for fear of being politically tainted by its large deficit ($188.8 billion) and whopping increases in defense. The G.O.P. members preferred instead to let the Democratic proposal, which calls for tax hikes of $30 billion and deficits of $174.5 billion, be the focus of debate. Reagan personally lobbied against the budget alternative, mostly with Democratic freshmen. He told Ronald Coleman of Texas that the Democratic plan was "way out of line." Army Secretary John Marsh also called Coleman, subtly reminding the Congressman that Fort Bliss was in his district. Coleman stuck with his party. "Even though I'm a freshman, I think there's enough of us not to let anything happen to Fort Bliss," he said. The 26 seats won by the Democrats last fall tipped the balance: on what was close to a party-line vote, the Democrats budget passed, 229 to 196.

The Democratic budget plan will not pass the Republican-controlled Senate, of course. But the President will have trouble prevailing there too. On defense spending, Republican leaders in the upper chamber are closer to the Democrats in the House than their leader in the White House. They have publicly urged that the growth in the Pentagon budget be cut to about 5%. The more pragmatic members of the President's staff, led by James Baker, are hoping for a compromise at about 7%. For them to persuade the President to come down to that level may be as difficult as getting Republican Senators to come up to it.

Underlying Reagan's speech last week was his unwavering contention that questions about the proper level of military spending should be divorced from the nation's overall budgetary and fiscal situation. The determining factor, Reagan insisted, should be the level of threat posed by the Soviets. "Our defense establishment must be evaluated to see what is necessary to protect against any or all of the potential threats," he said. "The cost of achieving these ends is totaled up and the result is the budget for national defense."

Reagan somberly detailed the overwhelming nature of these threats as he sees them. Using red and blue charts marked with the Soviet sickle and the American flag (which inexplicably contained 56 stars), he compared the production of armaments since 1974: 3,050 tactical warplanes for the U.S. vs. 6,100 for the Soviets, 27 U.S. attack submarines vs. 61 Soviet ones, 11,200 U.S. tanks and armored fighting vehicles vs. 54,000 for the U.S.S.R. He also displayed a graph of the unilateral increase in Soviet intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, noting the pledges made by Kremlin leaders at each point in their buildup. Critics claimed he did not make clear how the comparisons compelled precisely the spending increase that Reagan proposed, rather than one twice as big or one half the size, since the President was essentially contending the military budget should have nothing to do with the nation's ability to afford the spending.