Chaos Aplenty, but No Budget

A fragmented House votes down every one of seven plans

Right now, you haven't got the votes out there to pass the Lord's Prayer." So said Wisconsin Democrat Les Aspin last week, ruefully contemplating the spectacle of a sadly divided House of Representatives trying to come up with some kind of budget compromise. In a week of legislative chaos, the House debated seven different budget plans for fiscal 1983 and voted every last one of them down; none came within even 24 votes of passage.

Dismayed by huge deficits of $100 billion or more projected by nearly all the competing resolutions, but unable to agree on any combination of spending cuts and tax increases that would hold the red ink even to those figures, the legislators fragmented into splinter groups. Conservatives would accept no big cut in military expenditures. Liberals would buy no severe slash in social outlays. Leaders of the controlling Democrats and the minority Republicans lost command of their troops, who rejected frantic pleas that they pass something—anything.

At week's end Chairman James Jones began meeting with other members of the House Budget Committee to see if the group could draft yet another set of spending, revenue and deficit estimates that might possibly pass. If so, they will eventually have to be reconciled with a budget resolution passed by the Republican-controlled Senate two weeks ago. At very best, the nation will be kept waiting for weeks to see if anything can get by both chambers. The prolonged uncertainty will probably further delay any major drop in interest rates; that in turn could hold back any recovery from the present severe recession. If no budget passes, Congress will have to fund the Government either by a series of "continuing resolutions" or by passing spending and tax bills piecemeal, with no overall plan. Either way, deficits could spiral out of control.

At a Republican fund-raising dinner in Los Angeles, the President got a partisan laugh by joking, "Believe me, Bedtime for Bonzo made more sense than what they were doing in Washington." The reference, of course, was to a 1951 movie in which Ronald Reagan played a professor who tried to educate a chimp. The wisecrack was part of an attack on congressional Democrats, and as such was a bit unfair since Reagan is partly to blame for the present budget confusion. Back in February, he offered Congress a budget containing increases in military spending so large, cuts in social outlays so drastic, and deficit projections so high that hardly any legislators in either party would accept them. After compromise negotiations broke down in April, the President essentially left it up to Congress to draft an alternative budget. While on vacation at his Santa Barbara haven last week, however, the President telephoned two dozen Congressmen to urge passage of a budget resolution proposed by House Republican leaders.