Reagan spending veto leaves agencies short

SANTA BARBARA, Calif. (AP) — President Reagan vetoed a $14.2 billion catchall spending bill Saturday as a budget buster, and the government immediately began taking steps to avoid widespread furloughs of federal workers, agency shutdowns and program disruptions.

Deputy White House press secretary Larry Speakes said 27 government offices were left hurting for funds because of the veto. He said there was a good possibility some government employees — he did not know how many — would be laid off temporarily.

With the salaries of 3 million military personnel at stake under the bill, Reagan took extraordinary steps to avoid a payless payday for those in the armed services next Tuesday.

It was Reagan’s eighth veto since he took office.

Republican leaders in Congress had urged the president to sign the bill, warning that a veto might be overridden or that he might not get a second chance to win congressional approval of funds for his highly prized Caribbean Basin foreign aid program.

But Reagan, in a brief radio address broadcast live from his mountaintop ranch near here, said the bill exceeded his request for domestic programs by nearly $1 billion and contained funds for "several things I’ve vetoed already as being unnecessary.”

In a separate veto message to Congress, Reagan said, "I do not take this step lightly . ... But this bill would bust the budget by nearly a billion dollars.”

Reagan said that last week’s surge on Wall Street and other economic improvements were a positive reaction to congressional approval of a $98.3 billion taxincrease bill.

This reaction, he said, "is founded in large measure on a growing conviction that this government has finally developed the will to set its fiscal house in order. This legislation flies in the face of that conviction.”

Democratic leaders in Congress quickly criticized the president’s move.

House Majority Leader Jim Wright, Dtexas, said the veto "revives the spirit of confrontation and hostility which some of us had tried to put at rest” with approval of the tax increase package a week ago.

Wright said Reagan’s "theatrical veto” put his Caribbean Basin plan in "severe jeopardy.” He hinted that Democrats would hold the Caribbean program hostage for increased funds for domestic social welfare programs.

"Many of my colleagues are saying that if the president is unwilling to give needed help to the old, the poor and the handicapped in our own country, he can scarcely expect Congress to appropriate more for such people in other countries,” Wright said.

Senate Democratic Whip Alan Cranston of California said the veto "is not in the best interests of the U.S. economy” at a time when 10.7 million people are jobless. He said it would be difficult — but not impossible — to muster the required twothirds majority of the House and Senate to override the veto.

The bill, a supplemental appropriations measure for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, included $350 million for the Caribbean program, $6.1 billion for federal civilian and military pay raises that took effect last October, and $5 billion in expanded borrowing authority for the Commodity Credit Corp., which finances the government’s farm price support and commodity purchase programs.

Beyond that, the bill included $50 million in emergency aid for wartorn Lebanon and money for firefighting activities, Coast Guard operations, federal grants for Medicaid and other programs. Among the $918 million in spending that Reagan singled out as excessive were $217 million in financial assistance for college students, $185 million for other education programs, $211 million