Word: reaganized
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...defense budget in Congress. House Democrats last week passed their own version of a budget for fiscal 1984, which begins in October. Depending on how inflation is calculated, the Democratic plan raises defense spending by about 2% to 4%, compared with the more than 10% after-inflation boost that Reagan wants...
...Democratic leadership used various parliamentary maneuvers to ensure that the budget plan it had worked out would be considered as a whole; the only amendment they would permit was a substitute of Reagan's proposed tax and spending package. But no Republican was willing to introduce the Reagan version of the budget on the floor for fear of being politically tainted by its large deficit ($188.8 billion) and whopping increases in defense. The G.O.P. members preferred instead to let the Democratic proposal, which calls for tax hikes of $30 billion and deficits of $174.5 billion, be the focus of debate...
Underlying Reagan's speech last week was his unwavering contention that questions about the proper level of military spending should be divorced from the nation's overall budgetary and fiscal situation. The determining factor, Reagan insisted, should be the level of threat posed by the Soviets. "Our defense establishment must be evaluated to see what is necessary to protect against any or all of the potential threats," he said. "The cost of achieving these ends is totaled up and the result is the budget for national defense...
...Reagan somberly detailed the overwhelming nature of these threats as he sees them. Using red and blue charts marked with the Soviet sickle and the American flag (which inexplicably contained 56 stars), he compared the production of armaments since 1974: 3,050 tactical warplanes for the U.S. vs. 6,100 for the Soviets, 27 U.S. attack submarines vs. 61 Soviet ones, 11,200 U.S. tanks and armored fighting vehicles vs. 54,000 for the U.S.S.R. He also displayed a graph of the unilateral increase in Soviet intermediate-range missiles aimed at Europe, noting the pledges made by Kremlin leaders...
Reactions to Reagan's defense of his military spending plans were dwarfed by the debate over his vision of satellite missile killers. "To inject and hurl out this new idea while the whole world is waiting for the U.S. to come up with a reasonable arms control proposal I find bizarre," said Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut. "Can you imagine the reaction here and abroad if Yuri Andropov had made this speech?" Others were appalled at the enormous potential costs of a space race. Said Republican Senator Mark Hatfield of Oregon: "It is a call to siphon...