Ouch! Ouch! Ouch! This Will Hurt

Confusion and agony dominate the debate. Confusion, because no one can say which of the proposed cuts in Government spending might become law. The drastic ones recommended in Ronald Reagan's new budget? The arbitrary ones contemplated by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act? Whatever might emerge from a tortured compromise between President and Congress? Agony, because one thing is quite clear in any event: whenever, however and by whomever the job is done, any major shrinking of the gargantuan federal deficit must involve spending surgery that will hurt more citizens more seriously than ever. As that realization sinks in, the cries of anticipatory pain are growing ever louder.

Reagan opened his news conference Tuesday night by daring Congress, in effect, to substitute a tax increase for some of his spending cuts. Said the President: "Those who say that our budget is DOA--dead on arrival--are really saying, 'Brace yourself for a tax increase' . . . rest assured that any tax increase sent to me will be V.O.A.--veto on arrival." On a visit to St. Louis the next day, Reagan's motorcade pulled up to a side door of his hotel to bypass 150 angry farmers who oppose his budget priorities. Adding to their pain: some 75,000 letters from the Farmers Home Administration began going out last week to borrowers who have fallen behind on loan repayments, warning them to start catching up within 30 days if they hope to avoid eventual foreclosure.

To elicit more protests, the House Budget Committee, led by its low-key but & effective chairman, William Gray of Philadelphia, held hearings on Reagan's proposed cuts in five cities coast to coast. "Ronald Reagan has declared war on the city of Chicago," fumed Mayor Harold Washington. The President's "dastardly" budget, exclaimed Budd Bell, head of the Florida Clearinghouse on Human Services at a hearing in Tallahassee, "will result in the dismantling of many lifesustaining programs." Ron Anderson, president of Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, denounced cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, maternal- and child-health grants and childhood immunization programs as being likely to produce "short-term gains and long-term tragedies."

What is the alternative? Not to continue spending as before, acknowledged Democrat Gray. "We are going to have deficit reduction, and it is going to affect everybody," he remarked. At best, Reagan's opponents hope to slash the Pentagon budget enough so that reductions in civilian outlays will be less draconian than the President proposes. But those cuts would still be severe. And this year the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act, despite its murky status, ensures that the issue will not slide.

To be sure, a three-judge federal panel has ruled that the law's mechanism for triggering automatic cuts in spending is unconstitutional. Washington experts believe a final ruling by the Supreme Court may come in late June. But whatever the outcome, the law will continue to exert a powerful influence.