Word: stockman
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...illusions surrounding supply-side theory have been thoroughly shattered, both for David Stockman, convert-turned-cynic in a few short months, and, we hope, for the American people. Stockman, the "point man" for the President's budget- and tax-slashing program, describes in chilling terms in the current Atlantic Monthly just whom the plan benefits--the "hogs" of American big business were "really feeding" on a diet of special tax breaks. At the same time, the measly reductions in personal income taxes were serving as a convenient Trojan Horse to calm the American people while the richest raked...
While Reagan, without explanation, postponed any firm decision on which advice he would finally heed, he consistently sided throughout the week with Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, who waged a spirited, if lonely, fight against the Stockman-endorsed tax hikes. Stockman had worked with Senate Republican leaders to outline an $84 billion package of tax increases, largely on consumer items, over three years. The Budget Director's hope was to have the big tax hikes emerge from Chairman Pete Domenici's Senate Budget Committee, thereby taking some of the onus for the increases off the White House. But Regan...
...Monday debate Stockman was supported against Regan by Presidential Aides James Baker and Edwin Meese, as well as by Murray Weidenbaum, Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Martin Anderson, Assistant for Policy Development. They all urged the President to cling to his goal of a balanced budget by going along with tax increases. Stockman stressed that Reagan had spoken publicly of the balanced budget too often to abandon it. But the Treasury Secretary shrewdly argued that the President had only presented a balanced 1984 budget as a target, until pushed by reporters into viewing it as a promise...
...White House luncheon on the economy on Tuesday, the Budget Director brought along Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, who reinforced Stockman's argument against Regan's position. But the President remained unmoved, opposing any big tax increase. Said one Republican Congressman: "Reagan and Regan were the only ones in the room who agreed on that-and they constituted a majority...
...Wednesday, Stockman privately passed the word to Domenici that the President had to oppose tax increases publicly, but that the Budget Committee chairman should not abandon his tax increase plans. Regan on the same day met with key Republican Senators in Majority Leader Howard Baker's office and made a strong pitch against tax hikes, insisting that the entire Reagan economic program would "lose credibility" if big increases were enacted. But the Senators were not convinced. Said one, referring to the President: "We have to get it from the man himself...