No Time to Retreat: Reagan on more arms and no big tax hikes

The President insists on more arms and no big tax hikes in the budget

Full speed ahead for the Reagan revolution—and never mind the recession.

That, in essence, is the message of the President's budget for fiscal 1983, the first he has planned from scratch. Ronald Reagan is calling for slashes in social spending fully as painful as those enacted last year; in fact, total nondefense spending would actually decline slightly for the first time since 1960. Reagan is asking for an increase in military spending even more rapid than his earlier estimates. And he is prepared to accept deficits perilously close to $100 billion a year rather than change his tax-cutting strategy.

That is scarcely the message that Congress wants to hear. So deep are the fears of spreading recession and of the baleful consequences of ballooning deficits (see ECONOMY & BUSINESS) that if the President's program were presented this week for a single yes or no vote, few legislators would cry yes. Democrats are howling that further reductions in proposed social spending will strike savagely at the poor. Republicans are so horrified by giant deficits that some staunch conservatives are grumbling that planned defense spending ought to be reduced to stem the river of red ink. As Reagan himself noted in the budget message: "The voices of doubt, retreat and rejection are beginning to rise."

To those voices, the President turned a resolutely deaf ear. He headlined one section of his message NO TIME TO RETREAT. His 1981 accomplishments in slashing taxes and civilian spending while starting a huge military buildup, Reagan boasted, "far exceed anything the skeptics and critics ever dreamed possible just one year ago." The President added: "Our task is to persevere, to stay the course . . . to weather the temporary dislocations and pressures that must inevitably accompany the restoration of national economic, fiscal and military health."

In his budget message, Reagan claims that the growth rate of federal spending, which had soared to 17.4% in 1980, has declined to 10.4% this year and, under his plans for the fiscal year beginning on Oct. 1, will drop off to 4.5%. As a result, new federal spending will grow only $100 billion from 1981 to 1983, after increasing $163 billion from 1979 to 1981. Highlights of the President's proposals:

CIVILIAN SPENDING. Under the President's proposals, total spending by all departments and agencies of the Federal Government other than the Department of Defense would actually dip by $800 million in fiscal 1983, to $541.7 billion. Tiny though that figure is in terms of modern-day Government, it would represent the first outright decline in nondefense spending since the Eisenhower Administration, and it would come despite continued large increases in Social Security, medical benefits and interest paid on the national debt.