The Military's Majority

By GEORGE J. CHURCH

Reagan sides with Weinberger in proposing minimal defense cuts

Budget Boss David Stockman had the entire Republican leadership of Congress and even most of the Cabinet on his side. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, an aide admitted, had "a constituency of one." But that constituency is named Ronald Reagan. Overruling Stockman's proposals for deep cuts in military spending, the President decided last week that his deficit-reduction plan will contain only the minimal reductions Weinberger would accept.

Thus with his majority of one, Weinberger won one of the Administration's biggest internal fights. In the process he virtually ensured that the Administration would fail to meet its stated deficit-reduction goals and would once again send to Congress a budget that not even Republican members would support.

Hours after the White House had disclosed the numbers, Weinberger appeared before TV cameras in the Pentagon to spell out the dimensions of his victory. The Secretary announced that Reagan had "very wisely" decided on reductions "that are substantial but not crippling, as some of the proposals would have been." He then gave these details:

> Defense spending in fiscal 1986, which starts next Oct. 1, would be cut $8.7 billion below earlier projections, to $277.5 billion--still more than 5% above the total Congress voted for this fiscal year after allowing for inflation. Superficially, the reduction seems larger than the $8 billion Stockman had asked for, but the difference represents a juggling act with numbers.

> Outlays in 1987 and 1988 would be reduced primarily by the continuing effect of savings begun in 1986; there would be few if any additional cuts. So the trimming over three years would total only $28 billion, less than half the $58 billion Stockman had urged.

> Budget authority, meaning the Pentagon's authorization to sign new contracts, would be even more lightly trimmed.

Stockman had urged cuts totaling $121 billion over the next three fiscal years. Reagan agreed to only $29.6 billion.

The Reagan-Weinberger $259 agreement apparently preserves every procurement program, from the B-1B bomber to the MX missile. Indeed, since Reagan took office almost four years ago, not one weapons system requested by the Pentagon has been canceled.

The trouble with Reagan's military figures is that Congress is in no mood to accept a single one of them. Republican Stephen Bell, majority staff director of the Senate Budget Committee, says that Reagan's "feet will be in concrete" on defense spending and adds, "Most people with their feet in concrete are dead at the bottom of the river." A White House staff member concedes that "the question is whether we are part of the process" or whether Congress will simply ignore Reagan's budget and proceed to write its own.

For the past three years, no Republican has been willing to sponsor any of Reagan's original budget proposals. This anomaly seems inevitable once again. To most members, the Pentagon cuts--or rather the scaled-down spending increases--seem puny in comparison with the deep and genuine reductions in civilian spending that the White House will ask. Current plans are to whack outlays a total of $169 billion below earlier projections over the next three years--$34 billion in fiscal 1986 alone. That would involve freezes on such programs as food stamps and welfare, reductions in popular programs like Medicaid and veterans' health benefits and complete elimination of general revenue-sharing grants to states and cities, among other activities.

Cuts causing so much pain would be difficult to enact under any circumstances. Reagan's allies in Congress have been warning him for weeks that the task will be impossible unless the public can be convinced that the military is sharing fully in the sacrifices all Americans must make to reduce the ominous $200 billion budget deficit. But the military savings that Reagan and Weinberger agreed on would leave the Administration $25 billion short of its goal of halving the deficit to $100 billion by fiscal 1988.

Moreover, the $8.7 billion saving planned for fiscal 1986 involves some dubious counting. Some $1 billion will come from imposing on the Pentagon's civilian employees the 5% pay cut that Reagan proposes for all civil service workers; Stockman had already tabulated that as a domestic rather than a military spending cut.

Weinberger also hopes that a lower inflation rate and reduced fuel costs will slice almost another $1 billion off the Pentagon's bills, a saving that would entail no sacrifice.

The biggest cut, $4.1 billion, would result from reducing to 3% a 7.1% pay raise that 2.2 million members of the Army, Navy and Air Force are now scheduled to get on Jan. 1,1986. But that raise would be put into effect six months earlier, which means that some money would be "saved" out of the fiscal 1986 budget by being spent during the current fiscal year instead.

Only $2.5 billion would represent "program cuts," and Weinberger could not say last week what they would be. Speculation is that the Pentagon may buy fewer fighter planes and reduce the troubled Sergeant York DIVAD antiaircraft gun system. None of these programs, however, are likely to be canceled.

Why did Reagan disregard the congressional advice? At a private dinner in the White House last week, Nevada Republican Senator Paul Laxalt, Reagan's closest friend on Capitol Hill, warned the President once again that the proposed savings would be insufficient. Reagan replied that since arms-control negotiations with the Soviets may be about to resume, this would be a most inappropriate time to send Moscow anything it might interpret as a signal of U.S. softness. Weinberger made essentially the same point in public the next day. Said he: "You can't decide what you're going to have to spend for defense without looking outside the United States." The military forces, he added, still have "a long way to go to remedy the neglect of the 1970s."

Even many who accept Weinberger's argument that military spending should be determined by security considerations rather than budgetary ones, however, now dispute whether the amount of money being poured on the Pentagon is fully justified by military requirements. For example, Newt Gingrich of Georgia, a leader of New Right young Republicans in the House, advocates limiting military-spending increases in each of the next two years to 2% in excess of the rate of inflation. Congressman Mickey Edwards, a deeply conservative Oklahoma Republican, argues that four years of major military increases under Reagan, all of which he supported, have rebuilt U.S. fighting and deterrent capacity. Like many other Congressmen, Edwards also reports that his constituents have been enraged by tales of Pentagon waste and extravagance. Says he: "The military fights just as hard for funding to remodel generals' bathrooms and to remodel the gymnasium at the Air Force Academy as it does for its weapons systems. That is ridiculous."

Since such sentiments are well known to the White House, many in Congress speculate that Reagan had an additional motive for siding with Weinberger. In this view, Weinberger's argument probably went like this: Congress always cuts the Administration's military-budget requests anyway; if Reagan proposed relatively large reductions he might wind up with truly deep cuts. Better to open by asking for far more than the Administration has any hope of getting.

Congressional leaders warn that any such strategy is likely to backfire. Wyoming Congressman Dick Cheney, a Reagan loyalist, offers this analysis: the only way to get the President's civilian-spending cuts through the Democratic-controlled House is to bundle them into a single gargantuan bill for a yes-or-no vote.

That would have been difficult to arrange at best; now that the White House is proposing a military budget widely regarded as unrealistic, it may be impossible.

Instead, Cheney fears, House Democrats will once more insist on piecemeal votes in which more money will be sliced from defense and restored to domestic programs than either the White House or the Republican Senate will accept. The stage would then be set for a replay of the past three years: a confused three-cornered wrangle ending with a stopgap "continuing resolution" financing Government spending at levels that please nobody. That is no way to reach rational decisions about either civilian or military spending, or the deficit, or anything.

--By George J. Church. Reported by Neil MacNeil and Bruce van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by Neil MacNeil, BRUCE VAN VOORST