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Ultimately, the Administration's justification for such cuts is that reducing spending and taxes will pep up the economy enough to help everyone, including the Missouri mother. Says Secretary of Agriculture John Block: "The end objective is to provide a healthier economy in this country, to reduce inflation, reduce interest rates, improve job opportunities and provide more jobs for our people. In the final analysis, in spite of these different smaller areas where people feel they are being put upon, everyone is going to be better off." That contention is itself debatable: there are many economists, legislators and private citizens who doubt that the Administration's program can produce the noninflationary growth it aims at. But the more pertinent question is not whether the poor have a right to benefits, but whether some other way could not be found to achieve the lowering of spending and lightening of the tax load that almost everyone agrees is necessary.
Unfortunately for the purpose of informed public debate, the opposition Democrats have yet to produce much of an alternative. Wisconsin Democrat Henry Reuss, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee, last week did unveil a program to shrink the budget deficit about as much as Reagan proposes, but without cuts in food stamps, welfare or other programs for the needy. Reuss and the JEC staff suggested less generous cost of living increases in Social Security and federal military and civilian pensions, an end to spending on new construction for the interstate highway system and a deep cut into pork-barrel dam and water projects. However, the JEC alternate budget relies too heavily on tax increases —for example, doubling excise taxes on liquor and cigarettes, increasing gasoline taxes and ending the income tax deduction for interest paid on consumer debt —to seem realistic in the present political climate.
Other Democrats are mounting only feeble opposition to Reagan's program. The Senate Budget Committee two weeks ago voted to cut spending even deeper than the President had requested, and a united Republican majority should be able to pass the budget bill on the floor this week. The Senate voted last week to restore $200 million to a school lunch program, but that was a successful Republican move to prevent the Democrats from restoring twice as much. Even in the Democratic-controlled House, the only strategy seems to be delay: while still promising to pass a budget bill by July, the leadership is holding up on votes in hopes that lobbying coalitions can drum up more grass-roots opposition to social spending cuts than has appeared so far. One problem for the liberals is that the balance of power is held by some 40 conservative Democratic Representatives who are also eager to whack away at spending.