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The President devoted much of another budget meeting to insisting that the third stage of his income tax cuts, a 10% reduction taking effect July 1, could not be trimmed or delayed, and talked about moving it up to Jan. 1 in order to stimulate the economy. The idea horrified not only his economists (Martin Feldstein, his chief economic adviser, calculated it would add $14 billion to the fiscal 1983 deficit) but his political aides, who knew that it would be next to impossible to sell to Congress. Nonetheless, Reagan clung to the idea for almost a month. He finally abandoned it last week after Republican congressional leaders told him that he would have to fight hard to keep the 10% cut from being reduced or pushed back, much less speeded up. Reagan's obstinacy on other budget matters, however, bred frustration and animosity among aides who feared that the President was making a disastrous mistake. After one staff meeting, Baker and Presidential Counsellor Edwin Meese got into a shouting match over an absurdly irrelevant matter: whose staff had contributed more to the annual federal charity drive.
At the climactic budget session on Nov. 15, Stockman reported that the most that social spending could be reduced in fiscal 1984 was $26 billion, even assuming an $8 billion saving in Social Security. Whether Congress will take an ax to Social Security is doubtful, given the political perils involved. And lopping $18 billion from other social programs is highly questionable unless Reagan obliges with an accompanying cut in defense spending. In any case, Stockman said, that still left a $155 billion deficit, even projecting 4% economic growth in fiscal 1984, which is the most optimistic assumption anyone dares to make. The staff had hoped the figures would illustrate the impossibility of shaving the deficit significantly by social-spending reductions and economic growth alone. Instead, Reagan signified by his silence that he accepted the figures as a consensus on the most that could be cut, and that pretty much was that. Presidential advisers are now reduced to hoping that their painstaking presentations during the budget-making sessions softened up Reagan for an eventual compromise with Congress. But they concede that he is not prepared to compromise yet.
Will he ever be? For a successful man, Reagan is very passive, with little fire or curiosity. He rarely reaches outside the White House for answers or information. Says one adviser: "He loves it when you call him, but he never calls you. Nancy will call sometimes and then put him on the phone. Or she'll call up and ask me to call him." Reagan can be induced to change his mind, but it is a complex and tricky process. The key, by unanimous agreement of all who work for him, is to argue that a new position is as compatible with his fundamental beliefs as the one he is urged to abandon. Then Reagan can justify a switch as a mere tactical adjustment rather than a reversal of his conservative philosophy.