Retreating on Defense

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The immediate concern of the Pentagon and the White House will be to keep the Democratic-controlled House from reducing the military budget increase even below the rate of inflation (estimated by the Senate at 3.4% for the Pentagon in the next fiscal year). House Budget Committee Chairman William Gray complained that "still, under the Senate proposal, the Pentagon would receive an increase for inflation while domestic programs would be frozen or cut." Gray pledged a "more equitable" House resolution. His opposite number in the Senate, Domenici, replied that rather than agree to any further military cuts he would boycott an eventual House-Senate conference and leave Congress with no budget resolution at all.

However this fight comes out, it was obvious early on to almost everyone except Reagan and Weinberger that even the Republican-controlled Senate would not pass any significant increase in military spending this year. The politics were simple: Senate Republicans figured they had to do something to cut the budget deficit before it did real damage to the already slowing U.S. economy. But the cuts in civilian spending that Reagan demanded were bitterly unpopular with many of their constituents. To mollify them, the Republicans felt they had to make the Pentagon share in the sacrifice. All those tales of military extravagance, of $400 hammers and $600 toilet seats, had taken a toll. A / feeling had grown too that after years of rapid increases in military spending under Reagan, U.S. fighting strength had been adequately rebuilt.

The public seems to agree. In a new poll for TIME by Yankelovich, Skelly & White Inc.,* respondents were asked what they thought was the gravest problem the nation faced. Some 23% volunteered the budget deficit as an answer, more than those identifying any other subject. What should be done to reduce the deficit? Cut spending, said 60%. What spending? Respondents put military outlays at the top of the hit list; 64% wanted them slashed.

Reagan long seemed oblivious to this feeling. His own popularity is still high; 61% of respondents in the Yankelovich poll judged him to be providing generally excellent leadership, about the same rating as over the past year and a half (the poll was taken in the middle of the uproar

over his visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg). The President originally proposed a military budget increase of 5.9% in excess of inflation; in April he came down grudgingly to 3%, but would not budge beyond that.

As the President left on his ten-day European swing and Senate voting began on parts of the budget package, Dole tried out varying combinations of spending cuts in about 100 meetings with shifting coalitions of Senators. But the voting lineup kept coming out the same. Faced with almost unanimous Democratic opposition, Dole needed every Republican vote. But ten to twelve Republicans adamantly refused to approve any military increase that would exceed the inflation rate.