Budget now complete
Senate passes Reagan plan
WASHINGTON (AP) - The Senate ap
plied the final seal Thursday to a 1982
budget guideline totaling $695.4 billion,
but while the design is tailored skin-tight
to Pres. Reagan’s tax and spending pro
gram he’s likely to find the real cloth
much harder to cut.
‘‘The president is extremely pleased
that the Congress has acted in record
time” said White House deputy press
secretary Larry Speakes after the mea
sure cleared its final hurdle by a vote of
76-20 in the Republican-controlled
Senate. Only two Republicans joined
with 18 Democrats in opposition.
On Wednesday, the House voted
244-155 to approve the compromise —
agreed upon last week by House and
Senate budget writers — that accom
modates the president’s reductions on
both the tax and spending fronts.
Reagan’s signature is not required for
the measure.
“We take this as an indication that they
(Congress) mean business about getting
this country moving again,” Speakes
said.
Two more
Irish fasters
die in jail
BELFAST, Northern Ireland
(AP) — Hunger striker Patrick
“Patsy” O’Hara died Thursday
night at in the Maze Prison. He
was the second striker to die in a
day and the fourth this month in
an effort to gain political status
for Irish nationalist prisoners.
Prison authorities said he
died at 3:29 p.m. on the 61st day
of his fast. The 24-year-old
O'Hara was the first member of
the Irish National Liberation
Army faction, a radical splinter
group allied with the Irish
Republican Army’s Provisional
wing, to die on a hunger strike.
A wave of hijackings, fire
bombings and sniper attacks
swept Roman Catholic West
Belfast on Thursday after the
death of the Raymond
McCreesh, the third hunger
striker. Several thousand troops
in armored vehicles sealed off
much of the area to keep the
violence from spilling over into
Protestant neighborhoods.
The Roman Catholic primate
of all Ireland, Cardinal Tomas
O’Fiaich, appealed in "near
desperation” for compromise.
He again denounced violence
and described the killing this
week of five British soldiers in
an IRA explosion as a “revolting
deed (which) shames us all."
McCreesh, a 24-year-old IRA
guerrilla, died in Maze prison at
2:11 a m. Thursday with his
brother, the Rev. Brian
McCreesh, at his side.
Sporadic gunfire, gasoline
bombings and burnings raged
for five hours in this troubled
British province, but the viole
ncefollowing McCreesh’s death
was less than after the deaths of
his fellow IRA guerrillas Bobby
Sands, 27, on May 5 and Francis
Hughes, 25, on May 12.
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Sen. Pete Domenici, R-N.M., who
guided the plan through the Senate as
chairman of the Senate Budget Com
mittee, said after the vote the “watershed
resolution" establishes the “most sig
nificant and drastic spending change by
the federal government in 25 years."
But passage of the compromise merely
means Congress now faces the job of
actually cutting individual programs to fit
the targets set by the non-binding out
line.
Domenici said it was a "giant first step
... but it is nonetheless a first step."
He acknowledged the tougher battles
are still to come.
“Nothing as dramatic as this can be
easy,” Domenici said.
House Speaker Thomas O’Neill Jr.,
D-Mass., has said Democrats “are not
going to roll over and play dead” when it
comes to cuts in specific programs.
The compromise budget guidelines
include binding instructions to
congressional committees to make 1982
cuts totaling about $35 billion in existing
programs within their jurisdictions
through a so-called “reconciliation"
process.
Those cuts will be assembled into a,
single package next month. But that
package may be revised when it is con
sidered by the full House and Senate.
O’Neill said that Democrats will offer
amendments on the House floor to avert
some of the cuts contained in the
preliminary outline. The idea is that it will
be tougher for members to vote against
specific cuts than on one budget resolu
tion.
Basically, O’Neill envisions that the
House Rules Committee, controlled by
Democrats, will use parliamentary
procedures to enable introduction of the
amendments, which would restore
money for specific programs.
The speaker said amendments defin
itely would be offered to restore money
for student aid and school lunch pro
grams.
In addition, Domenici conceded “we
will have many floor amendments” in the
Senate
Overall, the compromise plan closely
resembles the $695.3 billion plan Reagan
originally recommended last February
and envisions the president's vow of a
balanced budget by 1984, assuming
several billion dollars in future cuts yet to
be identified.
The plan follows Reagan's economic
policy of calling for large cuts in
spending for social programs and
accelerated defense spending while
leaving room for the 30 percent, three
year personal income tax rate cuts the
president says will revitalize the econ
omy.
Democratic critics of the Reagan
backed proposal have attacked the
forecasts of strong economic growth
and interest rates of 10.5 percent used to
arrive at the $37.6 deficit figure in the
compromise plan. Reagan’s original
budget proposals called for a $45 billion
deficit in 1982.
Rep. James Jones, D-Okla., chairman
of the House Budget Committee called
the optimisitic projections "a politically
convenient mirage."
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