Retreating on Defense

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Reagan chose to treat the Senate vote as a triumph. Coming home from Europe Friday afternoon, he stepped off a Marine helicopter onto the South Lawn of the White House and exclaimed to a welcoming crowd of more than 100 Government employees, salted with luminaries like Treasury Secretary James Baker: "How sweet it is to return to a 50-49 Senate victory for spending restraint and no tax increase!" He insisted that if zero real growth in military spending is inadequate to protect the national security, "I will not hesitate to request, and the Senate leaders have assured me that they will consider, supplemental funding." Said Reagan: "This was the only serious deficit-reduction package that could pass the Senate."

White House aides contended that the budget resolution, military spending aside, gave Reagan most of what he wanted. Dole estimated it would reduce outlays by $56 billion below the totals foreseen earlier for fiscal 1986, which starts Oct. 1, and by $295 billion over three years. Both figures are a bit higher than Reagan had requested in his February budget. If all projections prove out, the deficit would shrink from an anticipated $213 billion in the current fiscal year to less than $100 billion by fiscal 1988.

But the composition of the cuts is not quite what Reagan had suggested. The President accepted a one-year freeze on Social Security benefits, which otherwise would go up 4% within the next year as an adjustment for inflation. That exposed him to bitter charges that he was violating a 1984 campaign pledge never to approve any cut in benefits. The President rather lamely replied at his farewell-to-Europe press conference in Lisbon that he had never intended to guarantee increases, but merely to protect the aged against reductions.

The budget resolution abolishes 13 federal civilian programs, as Reagan had asked. But it keeps in existence at reduced funding levels several other programs and agencies that Reagan wanted to eliminate. It also reduces spending less than the President recommended for such major programs as Medicare and farm subsidies.

In essence, the Senate took money for social programs from the military. The $302.5 billion in Pentagon spending authority (the right to sign contracts) that the Senate approved for fiscal 1986 is a bit more than $20 billion below Reagan's initial request in February, and $10.3 billion less than a compromise figure the President grudgingly approved five weeks ago. The resolution would allow the military budget to rise 3% in excess of the expected rate of inflation in each of the following two years; Reagan initially wanted increases of 8.2% and 8.8%.

Weinberger did not hide his chagrin. "Nobody wanted to make these cuts," he said. "The President didn't, and I certainly didn't." Though the Pentagon does not yet know what it will do without, the vote seems sure to slow the U.S. military buildup that was one of Reagan's proudest accomplishments throughout his first term (see box).