What Stockman Said

The remarks that forced Office of Management and Budget Director David Stockman to offer his resignation to President Reagan appeared in a 24-page article in the December issue of the Atlantic Monthly. Among Stockman 's striking comments:

On Reaganomics: "The reason we did it wrong--not wrong, but less than the optimum--was that we said, Hey, we have to get a program out fast. .. We were working in a 20-or 25-day time frame, and we didn't think it all the way through. We didn't add up all the numbers." In another part of the article: "The pieces were moving on independent tracks--the tax program, where we were going on spending, and the defense program, which was just a bunch of numbers written on a piece of paper .. . But, you see, for about a month and a half we got away with that because of the novelty of all these budget reductions."

On tax cuts: "The hard part of the supply-side tax cut is dropping the top rate from 70 to 50%--the rest of it is a secondary matter. The original argument was that the top bracket was too high, and that's having the most devastating effect on the economy. [However] to make this palatable as a political matter, you had to bring down all the brackets. But, I mean, Kemp-Roth was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top rate. .. It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle-down,' so the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle-down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory."

On the Administration's budget estimates and economic forecasts: "None of us really understands what's going on with all these numbers. You've got so many different budgets out and so many different baselines and such complexity . .. people are getting from A to B and it's not clear how they're getting there. It's not clear how we got there. [One deficit estimate was reached] "by hook or by crook, mostly the latter."

On defense spending: "The whole question is blatant inefficiency, poor deployment of manpower, contracting idiocy .. . Hell, I think there's a kind of swamp of $10 to $20 to $30 billion worth of waste that can be ferreted out if you really push hard. [But the Pentagon] got a blank check . . .they got so goddamned greedy that they got themselves strung way out there on a limb."

On Congressional reception of tax cuts: "Do you realize the greed that came to the forefront? The hogs were really feeding. The greed level, the level of opportunism, just got out of control. [The Administration's] basic strategy was to match or exceed the Democrats, and we did."

On what was achieved by the Administration's spending reductions: "There was less there than met the eye ... Let's say that you and I walked outside and I waved a wand and said, I've just lowered the temperature from 110 to 78. Would you believe me? What this was was a cut from an artificial CBO [Congressional Budget Office] base. That's why it looked so big. But it wasn't."

On his recommendations for cuts in Social Security benefits: "Basically I screwed up quite a bit."

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