The shadow of '84

...In 1984, nineteen Republican Senate seats will be up for re-election and only fourteen Democratic...

...The Budget Act will probably be debated until the nation's tricentennial...

...As a result, backed by three fellow-Republicans, Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici, his own term up in 1984, joined with the committee's Democrats in calling for $30.2 billion additional, and unspecified, taxes for the 1984 fiscal year...

...The inability of the Senate Republicans, much less the White House, to strike such a balance reflects the conflict within the nation...

...Domenici greatly needs the visibility of successful political leadership...

...Enter the Senate Budget Committee, starring a cast of Republicans in the majority: the same Republicans who masterfully carried through some of Ronald Reagan's biggest legislative victories over the past two years...

...The paranoia is real...

...Secretary Weinberger's approach is but one of a series of assaults on the budget process...

...Baker's vacant seat is considered quite vulnerable to the likely Democratic nominee, Representative Albert Gore, while Randolph's vacancy is the only Democratic seat even thought to be targetable at the present time by Republicans-save for Senator Joseph Biden, Jr...

...and its seams are unraveling as a result...

...The traditional Senate protection, the six-year term, is being eroded by the decline of party structure and higher turnover of Senate incumbents...

...Their proposal entails a deficit of $27 billion less than the administration's...

...Reagan had also apparently indicated that he wanted the time to develop some flexibility in the defense budget...

...Strange thing are happening on the right side of the aisle...

...The Budget Committee's refusal to go higher than a 5 percent defense increase has been characterized as the presidents's ' 'biggest defeat on Capitol Hill...

...Why, if you closed your eyes, with such election paranoia eighteen months ahead of schedule, you might think it was the House of Representatives...

...Yet it is recognized by many in the Senate that the budget process is one of the few comprehensive policy-making tools available to Congress-where discipline can be imposed on a fiscal situation that cries out for a better balance between taxes and spending, especially in future years...

...they ask why it can't be applied to the Defense Department as well...

...It's no wonder that members of the Senate are behaving more and more like members of the House-both are constantly running for reelection...

...The tandem suggestions to jettison the Budget Committee are prompted, in the case of certain members of the administration, by belief that the budget process no longer serves their political ends, and in the case of certain members of the Senate, by resentment at how the administration has been able to use that process, and by the desire to insure that it not be used again either to cut their programs or further diminish their power...

...This may be a bit overstated...

...but constituents are saying enough is enough...

...A Senate-established study group of former members James Pearson and Abraham Ribicoff has recently called for elimination of the Budget Committee and proposed that its duties be taken up by a shared subcommittee of the Senate Appropriation and Finance Committees...

...Fiscal 1980 military spending was $135.9 billion...

...one, Senator Hatch, had a spirited race in 1982 and another, Senator Armstrong, faces the voters in 1984...

...Rather, he asserts that Mr...

...Four of the five Republicans seeking reelection in 1984 further rebuffed the president by joining four other Republicans and nine Democrats to vote for a 5 percent increase in the defense budget...

...Reagan can veto any appropriation bill that exceeds his spending limit...

...Whether yanked by the anger of the unemployment-riddled Frostbelt or by the exasperation of the federally-plagued West, the Republican party is being stretched and pulled too far to cover the nation...

...You could sense the reply in the minds of Senate Republicans, eighteen of them in particular: "If we stand with the president now, will we have seats to sit on in 1985...

...Procedure and processes can be argued forever...

...The most dramatic response was made by Defense Secretary Weinberger when he suggested that the president does not need a budget resolution to set the targets for congressional spending...

...Reagan has been very successful in getting Congress to increase military spending...

...It's enough to make someone hear footsteps...

...But open your eyes - it is the Senate...

...Yet on the Republican side, eight to nine incumbents are said to be in trouble and another five within Democratic range...

...It is this concern that prompted conservative Iowa Republican Charles Grassley to call for a freeze in defense spending...

...Yet notwithstanding the president's failure to generate any appreciable support for his defense increase, he offered no compromise figure to Domenici that could be used to build a Republican coalition-hence, the Budget Committee's reduction of the president's increase to 5 percent...

...The administration's response to this concern over deficits has been another futile call for further cuts in domestic spending and a renewed threat by the president to veto any repeal of his third-year tax cut or of tax indexing-despite a fiscal '84 deficit of $208 billion...

...And that was when the numbers were in the Republicans' favor...

...Reflective of the party fragmentation elsewhere, fellow cabinet member Dave Stockman openly contested this tactic and provided the president with data (somehow leaked to the press) showing that Weinberger's strategy of confrontation would lead to a stalemate allowing spending to go on, despite the president's veto power, but without the discipline inherent in the budget process, and assuring $200 billion deficits "as far as the eye could see"-a prospect not relished by any incumbent in 1984, whether senator or president...

...a difference of 63,000 votes in five Senate races in 1982 would have given Bob Byrd back his title of majority leader...

...The president's unbudg-ing request for significant further increases conflicts with a major concern among the electorate-one that the administration took great care to instill -the projection of higher deficits in the years to come, with their accompanying high interest rates and threats to economic recovery...

...Washington report THE SHADOW OF '84 WHY GOP SENATORS ARE FIDGETING WORRIED Republican senators, looking over their shoulders at their colleagues' close races in 1982, and looking ahead to dismal forecasts for 1984, are rethinking their party-line voting and jumping off the presidential yacht - causing the White House in turn, once again to rethink its approach to the 1984 budget...

...The core of the Republican leadership in the Senate is on the chopping block in 1984, including eight committee chairmen and the seats of the majority leader and the assistant majority leader...

...of Delaware (and that only if challenged by Republican Governor Pierre S. du Pont IV...

...For the FY 84 budget, Ronald Reagan's position has hardly been one of reconciliation...

...A number of senators also report that their constituents have learned too well the oft-cited administration couplet, waste and inefficiency, used to justify deep cuts in domestic spending...

...as a Budget Committee member he voted against the 5 percent increase because he thought the growth rate in defense spending too high...

...Majority Leader Baker is retiring, as is Democratic Senator Jennings Randolph...

...fiscal 1983 defense outlays are estimated to be $214.2 billion-a 25.4 percent increase...

...Angry, defeated, and skeptical, Reagan, at a meeting with Senate Budget Committee Republicans, defensively pleaded: "When are we going to have the guts to stand for what's right instead of what's popular...

...The delay was a considerable sacrifice for Domenici since as Budget Chairman, he was sensitive to the blame accorded the budget process for the confrontations and delays in appropriations during the last Congress...

...The elections also had their impact on the other end of the Republican spectrum...

...Many Senate Republicans find that their constituents reflect the findings of the national polls on military spending (a March 28 Harris survey found 29 percent favoring a decrease in the defense budget and 54 percent for keeping it as it is now...

...Three conservative panel members held out against the White House pressure to compromise on taxes in order to muster a Republican majority on the Budget Committee...

...Moreover, given the resurgence of the New Mexico Democrats in the 1982 elections (fellow Republican Senator Harrison Schmitt was defeated by Democrat Jeff Bingaman), Mr...

...Reagan's 10.3 percent increase in military spending-and nineteen votes against...

...The fifty-four Senate Republicans are well aware of the fragility of their majority, but at times it seems that the White House is not...

...and the newest evidence of this campaign mood can be found in the Senate Budget Committee's consideration of the FY 1984 budget, where Committee Republicans have given up supporting the White House's dogmatic and unalterable positions...

...But the problem is that the country needs a budget now...

...Or at least this appears to be the case in two areas of particular concern to the eighteen Republicans who will be seeking reelection-defense and deficits...

...When the voting was completed on the FY 84 budget, after a series of inexcusable and wasteful delays attributed to the White House, the Democrats had a major victory, prevailing not only in numbers but in theory...

...JEREMIAH BARUCH...

...Senators Chafee, Stafford, and Weicker, moderates who won by slim margins in 1982, joined Senators Mathias and Hatfield (who is up in 1984) to propose an alternative budget with increases in domestic programs, decreases in defense, and a repreal of the third-year tax cut and indexing...

...President Reagan prevailed upon a reluctant Chairman Domenici to delay the Committee's consideration of the budget resolution for several weeks so that he could build up public support for his 10.3 percent defense spending increase...

...Only two votes could be found in the entire Budget Committee for Mr...

...This vote broke a week-long impasse and allowed a draft budget resolution to be sent to the floor by a vote of 13 to 4. Since this resolution was supported by only five of the panel's twelve Republicans, the Budget Committee for the Republican-controlled Senate had, in effect, reported out a Democratic budget...