GOP Leaders In Senate Draft Revised Budget --- Reagan Backs Plan to Curb Defense Spending, Drop Social Security Increase
WASHINGTON -- The Senate Republican leadership drafted a revised budget plan that would eliminate any cost-of-living increase for Social Security beneficiaries next year and hold growth in fiscal 1986 defense spending to the rate of inflation.</br></br>President Reagan endorsed the lower military figures in an effort to win passage of the total package. Most of the increased savings from the Pentagon would be used to restore proposed cuts in domestic programs.</br></br>Though relatively small in 1986, the deeper savings from the president's proposed defense budget would amount to $17.7 billion over the next three years when compared with an earlier leadership compromise allowing 3% growth after inflation. Only last week, Mr. Reagan criticized the Senate for being "irresponsible" when it rejected the higher military figures. In accepting the revised budget package, the administration has agreed to more than $21 billion in reductions from its initial spending request for fiscal 1986, which starts Oct. 1, and more than $115 billion in the next three years.</br></br>The GOP leadership, scrambling to win needed votes, backed away from terminating such sensitive items as Amtrak subsidies, the Job Corps, the Small Business Administration, mass transit operating assistance and "impact" education aid for public school districts affected by federal installations. More than $5 billion was restored to student aid and federal health programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and proposed agriculture savings were reduced in an effort to appease farm-state senators.</br></br>Sen. Edward Zorinsky (D., Neb.) was expected to vote with the Republicans after winning what he estimated were $2.5 billion in restorations for farm programs, and a White House aide predicted narrow victory for the budget package. "We ought to be all right, exactly all right," the aide said.