The Blame Game Begins

By DAN GOODGAME

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.

With reporting by Hays Gorey/Washington