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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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1990-09-17
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NATION, Page 26The Blame Game BeginsReagan's last budget presages a flap over Bush's first
Like all those that preceded it, the final budget that
President Reagan will unveil this week asks Congress for more
spending than revenue. Reagan will nevertheless hail it as a blow
against government profligacy, and in the looking-glass world of
federal budgetmaking, he will have a point.
The $1.2 trillion spending plan for fiscal 1990 predicts a
deficit of $93 billion, a smaller overdraft than those Reagan
requested and got in earlier years, when he blamed Democrats for
the deficit. It calls for a $4 billion hike in defense spending,
$10 billion cuts in programs that mainly benefit the middle class
and a $4 billion jump in Government efforts to assist the poor.
There are some wildly optimistic assumptions, such as the forecast
that over the next year interest rates will fall a whopping 2.7
percentage points.
Not that the details matter much. At best the seven-volume,
3,000-page document will serve as a starting point in an elaborate
budgetary blame game pitting Reagan's successor, George Bush,
against his rivals in the Democratic-controlled Congress. Each side
is intent on holding the other responsible for the painful and
unpopular combination of program cuts and new revenues that will
be needed to reduce the projected deficit of $127 billion to the
$100 billion mandated under the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law.
In a ritual game of budgetary chicken, neither side wants to offer
the first specific ideas for cuts. Says a senior Bush transition
official: "Cutting people's pet programs is a terribly negative way
to start your Administration. We plan to postpone that as long as
possible and let Congress clean up its own mess." Democratic
leaders of Congress retort that Bush promised to balance the budget
without new taxes or restraint on Social Security. Says Senate
Democratic leader George Mitchell: "It is protocol, it is
tradition, and it is correct for the President to set forth his
budget goals first and for the Congress to act."
Bush promised last week to reveal ideas for reducing the
deficit at a special joint session of Congress shortly after his
Inauguration. He has also asked House and Senate leaders to join
him in early budget talks. Bush's designated budget director,
Richard Darman, has discussed with Republican leaders the idea of
dividing the budget into five to 20 categories, such as "national
security" and "health care," and putting an overall spending limit
on each. Added together, the reductions would slice the deficit to
$100 billion. It would be up to Congress to fill in the blanks by
deciding which programs in each category would have to be slashed
to meet the overall target.
This draft plan would, according to a Republican insider, "let
Bush stake out the high ground on the deficit issue," and at low
political cost. The new President could claim to have fulfilled his
campaign pledge to meet the deficit-cutting targets without new
taxes, but avoid the need to identify specific programs for the
budget ax. That is precisely why key Democrats like Mitchell and
House Budget Committee Chairman Leon Panetta dismiss the vague
outline as a political ploy. Last week even some Republican
officials urged Darman and Bush to go a half-step further and list
"broad proposals" to reform Medicare and farm subsidies. But like
any smart cardplayer, Bush has no intention of showing his hand.