Senate Adopts Democratic Budget With New Taxes, Pentagon Freeze
The Senate, closing the first chapter of the 100th Congress' effort to put a Democratic imprint on the nation's spending policies, yesterday endorsed a $1 trillion budget for fiscal 1988, amid Republican predictions that it will never take effect.</br></br>The spending blueprint, negotiated last week by a House-Senate conference committee and adopted on Tuesday by the House, calls for $19.3 billion in new taxes and virtually no increase in defense spending unless President Reagan abandons his pledge and does not veto tax increase legislation.</br></br>The budget, covering the federal spending year that begins Oct. 1, passed the Senate 53 to 46, with three Republicans voting for the budget resolution and three Democrats opposing it.</br></br>With the approval of the budget last night, Congress now embarks on the more difficult task of enacting the individual spending and revenue-raising measures necessary to translate the framework into policy. To do so, the Democrats, who now maintain a tenuous control of Congress for the first time since Reagan took office, must negotiate a gauntlet of presidential opposition.</br></br>"Without the president's cooperation and positive involvement, the next few weeks will not be easy," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) conceded yesterday. "I ask again for the president to join us."