(3 of 6)
At the same time, the President is skillfully courting powerful members of Congress, inviting them to the White House for long private chats. Reagan stepped up his Hill wooing last week by paying a public 45-minute call on a bipartisan group of 13 House and Senate leaders. To underscore the symbolism, he met with them in the ornate President's Room of the Senate, where Chief Executives once signed bills; the last to do so was Lyndon Johnson in 1965. As in the private talks, Reagan appealed for support without disclosing any details of his program, but the legislators were so pleased that they applauded him when he entered and again when he left. House Speaker Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill remarked afterward: "He's got charisma. He's got class. He's got political hype, make no mistake about it."
More than charisma and hype, however, will be needed to sell the program, if the Administration's final budget proposals are anywhere near as drastic as indicated by a 149-page black book circulated by the Office of Management and Budget among key congressional Republicans. The report, which Howard Baker dubbed "the book of cuts and wounds," lists about half the reductions in planned future spending that White House advisers are considering. At this stage, they are only recommendations to Reagan; which ones the President will eventually adopt is not yet known.
Nonetheless, the book is a startling document. The Administration's aim is to reduce nondefense spending by $14 billion to $15 billion in the few remaining months of fiscal 1981, by $40 billion to $50 billion in the next fiscal year, and by even more in the years that follow. To achieve those goals, the President is pondering cuts that would affect the elderly, the poor, students, workers, farmers, businessmen, artists—just about everybody.
Some of the proposals that David Stockman, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, has made to Reagan on the budgets for fiscal 1981 and 1982:
>Tighten eligibility requirements and trim benefits slightly to cut back spending on food stamps, which was previously budgeted at $12.9 billion for fiscal 1982, by $2.6 billion. Make subsidies less generous for meals that are served in day-care centers and schools to reduce the cost of child-nutrition programs by 25%, or $1 billion. Put a limit on Washington's contributions to the federal-state Medicaid program, which helps poor Americans pay for health care, to save $1 billion in fiscal 1982.
>End payments that enable states to extend unemployment compensation for periods longer than the standard 26 weeks, saving $1.1 billion in fiscal 1982. Forbid the CETA program, which offers public service jobs to the hard-core unemployed, from expanding this fiscal year, and eliminate it altogether in 1982, saving $3.7 billion that year.
>Cut business subsidies by as much as $6 billion next year by trimming federal grants designed to encourage development of synthetic fuels, such as oil burned out of shale rock. Also, reduce (by an as yet undisclosed amount) funds earmarked for the Export-Import Bank, which facilitates sales of U.S. products and services overseas.