Nation: Conservative Conservatism

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The second question is whether Reagan will really be able to enforce the spending cuts that he now admits are necessary to balance his tax reductions. The early portents are not favorable. Many economists believe that federal spending can never be brought under control without a clampdown on the "entitlement" programs—Social Security, veterans' benefits, Medicaid—under which more Americans every year qualify for benefits that are guaranteed by law to expand. And Reagan last week pledged himself to maintain "necessary entitlements already granted to the American people," though he opposed adding any "new programs funded by deficits." Says Otto Eckstein, a Democratic member of the Board of Economists: "If you are not going to change the entitlement programs and if you want more military expenditures, there is no way on earth that you can achieve savings anywhere near the magnitude [that Reagan proposes] and if you can't achieve those savings, then of course you can't afford Kemp-Roth."

Finally, if elected, Reagan will have to push his programs through a Congress that is bound to be highly skeptical—one in which Democrats will continue to control at least the House, unless Reagan wins by an unlikely landslide. Even some top Republicans have misgivings about Reagan's proposals. Says New York Representative Barber Conable, ranking Republican on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee: "I regret that Reagan has hewn to the line on Kemp-Roth. I think that Congress would use Reagan's plan as a starting point, and do its own things, as it always does." Thus Reagan's program is almost certain to be changed if he makes it to the White House. The prospect of altering the design does not dismay all of his advisers. Though, understandably, they will not come out and say so, even privately, some would not be unhappy to see Congress reduce the size of the tax cuts, thereby making Ronald Reagan's already scaled-down program even more modest still.

—By George J. Church.

Reported by Laurence I. Barrett with Reagan and William Blaylock/Washington