Bush, Congress OK Budget Deal, Duck Hard Choices

WASHINGTON —  President Bush and congressional leaders today announced a nearly $28-billion deficit-reduction plan that Bush said would be “a first, manageable step” toward stemming the tide of red ink.

The agreement, thrashed out in more than a month of talks that concluded late Thursday night, minimally meets next year’s goal of reducing the deficit to $100 billion, while putting off the tough choices until later.

It allows the President to claim he will not violate his campaign pledge against new taxes, and he agreed to lower his defense spending plans so that Congress could avert a squeeze on popular domestic programs.

‘Bipartisan Spirit’

“The budget agreement does not complete the whole deficit-reduction job . . . but I am convinced that we will only be able to complete that job if we tackle it in manageable steps on an orderly basis in a constructive bipartisan spirit,” Bush said. “And this is a first manageable step.”

“This is not an heroic agreement,” said House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.). “If we begin with the assumption that there can be no significant major increase in revenue, this agreement is about as good as we could do.”

“No one should be deluded into thinking that this is the end of the process,” said Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell (D-Me.). “Much sterner measures will be required in the future.”

Bush and the House and Senate leadership sealed the deal in a morning meeting in the Cabinet Room, and then announced it at a Rose Garden ceremony.

Sen. Lloyd Bentsen (D-Tex.), the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, attended the meeting with Bush but refused to join in the announcement.

“He declined to go out in the Rose Garden and have his picture taken because he doesn’t like the agreement,” said Jack Devore, Bentsen’s spokesman.

The senator told Bush “that he thought the budget was marginal, that he’s concerned that it depends on wildly optimistic economic assumptions and there remains a great gulf between the Congress and the Administration on how you raise the $5.3 billion in new taxes Bush is calling for,” Devore said.

The plan claims to reduce the fiscal 1990 deficit to about $99.4 billion, meeting the goal of the Gramm-Rudman law of a deficit no larger than $100 billion in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.