Soft Touch At the OMB

Its chief has little impact

When James Mclntyre Jr. was propelled from near anonymity last December to replace flamboyant Bert Lance as chief of the Office of Management and Budget, everybody hoped that more was there than met the eye. Mclntyre, 37, had served well enough as Lance's deputy at OMB and as Georgia's budget director under Governor Jimmy Carter. But many skeptics wondered if the bland lawyer from Vidalia, Ga., had the forcefulness and credentials for the top job previously held by such heavyweights as Charles Schultze and Kermit Gordon. Of his critics, Mclntyre asked only "that I be judged on my experience."

Now that judgment is in--and to many at OMB and on Capitol Hill Mclntyre appears to be a man in over his head, a sheep in sheep's clothing. To alarmists, he is an inept custodian of a budget out of control.

The OMB Director is the chief adviser to the President on the preparation and control of the budget, and he should have a dominant voice in the management and spending plans of the Government's myriad agencies. The job calls for making agonizing choices from among many competing programs while keeping a lid on spending. With inflation rising and demands on the public purse growing, the post is especially critical. Yet under Mclntyre, the OMB has less impact on policy than at any time in memory, even though the Director continues to enjoy the support of the President, who is comfortable with his fellow Georgian's basic fiscal conservatism.

Part of the problem is Mclntyre's deferential style, which makes it difficult for him to play the OMB Director's traditional role of abominable no man. At the Thursday breakfast meetings of the economic council in Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal's private dining room, Mclntyre adds little to the discussions. At staff meetings with the President, the OMB chief is the ultimate wallflower, letting assistants do most of the talking.

Mclntyre does not yet seem familiar enough with federal programs to act as either a strong advocate or an effective critic. Last week Joseph Pechman, a Brookings Institution economist who is one of the leading experts on budget policy, condemned the fiscal 1979 budget for failing to make any decisions on spending priorities and putting forward "no significant new proposals for economizing." When HEW Secretary Joseph Califano first proposed a welfare reform package last year, he claimed it would cost $2.8 billion more than existing welfare programs; by January the extra price had leaped to $8.8 billion, and the Congressional Budget Of fice now estimates it at $17.4 billion. An alert and knowing OMB should have stopped such a boondoggle at the start.

As a manager, Mclntyre is almost universally regarded as a thoroughly nice guy, a smiling fellow who is unable to make decisions fast enough on problems he does not understand. The result, staffers complain, is that it takes forever to get things through his office. He also tends to bog down in minutiae, especially in the area of Government reorganization, while major policy questions are slighted. Mclntyre has made both his own and his staffs job even tougher by failing to fill several key OMB posts, including those of deputy director and chief economist.

The harshest assessments of Mclntyre come from conservatives who see the OMB'S inability to reduce the federal budget deficits as a root cause of inflation.

Jack Carlson, chief economist of the National Chamber of Commerce and a former top OMB official, says: "The President needs a change at OMB, a man who can stand toe-to-toe with someone like Labor Secretary Ray Marshall or Defense Secretary Harold Brown and tell him to drop programs." Carlson's glum conclusion: "There will be no serious budget cutting with Mclntyre there."

Mclntyre denies that either he or the OMB has been ineffectual. He notes that among other things, he was a major force in persuading the President to reduce the size of his proposed income tax cut to lessen the threat of inflation. Says Mclntyre: "I have been the principal advocate of reducing the budget deficit. All the President's economic advisers have come to agree with me." But if Mclntyre hopes to still the criticism, he will have to be a tougher, sharper cutter.

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