Word: stockmans
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Rumors still circulate that Stockman will be eased out as Office of Management and Budget director after he finishes shaping the fiscal 1983 budget proposals that Ronald Reagan will present to Congress in January. But Stockman's efforts last week sharply reduced that likelihood. Like him or not, Republican congressional leaders and the White House once again found him very useful when it came to adding up their big budget numbers...
...Stockman's weekend performance did not please everybody. Congressional Democrats and even some Republicans charged that Stockman had led them to believe that the President would accept the emergency fiscal 1982 funding measure hammered out by a Senate-House conference, even though Stockman was one of those who successfully urged Reagan to veto it. Said G.O.P. Senator Mark Andrews of North Dakota: "We all thought we had done the job. But Stockman found that he was using the wrong mirror, so he got himself another mirror...
However, the fact that it was Senator Baker who phoned his White House namesake, Chief of Staff James Baker, to ask for Stockman's assistance in calculating the effect of various budget proposals impressed Washington influence weighers. The Senate majority leader had earlier expressed concern that Stockman's doubts about Reagan's economic program, as reported in the celebrated Atlantic Monthly article, might destroy the OMB director's credibility with Congress...
Moreover, the President clearly indicated that he values Stockman's counsel by following his advice. When the Atlantic article first appeared, the President summoned Stockman for a chewing out that the OMB boss described as "a visit to the woodshed." But in an interview with ABC's Barbara Walters last week, Reagan stoutly defended Stockman's loyalty to the Administration. The President said he accepted Stockman's assertion that his remarks to the Atlantic were "off the record," and added that "David Stockman was not the sinner. He was sinned against...
Altogether, Stockman found it profitable, as well as necessary, to scrub a four-day, 15-stop speaking tour of the Midwest and West, which he had scheduled to shore up his standing with Reagan loyalists. The OMB director did address a fund raiser in Denver, by telephone hookup from Washington, and said he "considered it a privilege to work 15 hours a day on some days as a soldier in the revolution coming to America." But he canceled all his personal appearances, to the annoyance of some Republican Congressmen...