From Woodshed to Firing Line

After his celebrated indiscretions in the Atlantic last November, it was assumed that David Stockman had committed suicide by pen. Indeed, the Administration's star statistician and masterful Director of the Office of Management and Budget lowered his profile practically to the point of invisibility. He refused all requests for interviews and appeared on Capitol Hill only at closed-door sessions to negotiate the "final" 1982 budget package.

All the while, Stockman was busily preparing the 1983 budget, which is as much his handiwork as the President's. He personally wrote Reagan's budget message, as well as 75 pages of the 610-page document; he even redrew charts and footnotes to make the presentation clearer. Said an amazed career official at OMB: "We've been lucky in the past if our Director even read all of the budget before it went to the printer. In this case, Stockman wrote it." Now the OMB Director is emerging from his self-imposed isolation. Last week he made his first public appearance before Congress since his Atlantic splash. Predictably, he ran into a barrage of critical grilling.

"You came here last year and willfully misled us," scolded Ohio's Democratic Senator John Glenn in a committee hearing on Reagan's New Federalism proposals. "You brandished around computer printouts and had facile answers for everything. But we discovered later that those computer figures didn't add up, that they were deliberately altered. We were deceived. The net result of that breach of faith is only now being felt--deficits of $100 billion or more, more people unemployed than any time since the Depression. I certainly hope we get straight figures this year, undoctored and unaltered."

Face reddening, voice rising, Stockman struck back: "If you don't like our budget forecast, then you're free to go up to the Congressional Budget Office and get another set. Nobody was tricked or misled." Confronting Glenn, he said: "I don't appreciate that, and I hope you won't find it necessary to bring it up again."

But other Senators carried on the attack. Referring bitingly to a "credibility problem" at OMB, Tennessee Democrat James Sasser declared: "We're going to have to have truth in packaging this year." Even Illinois Republican Charles Percy wondered about the Administration's real commitment to the New Federalism, asking: "Is this a pretext for budget cutting?"

Stockman's aides had opposed sharp replies to such attacks. He disagreed, arguing: "You have to do what you're sent up there to do. That often means fighting back." He suggested that "about 15 people up on the Hill can't wait to try that on me. They'll soon discover they can't go back to that well again and again."

Though his job is still far from secure, Stockman appears to have mended fences inside the Administration's top echelon. The supply-side true believers in the Administration, who regarded Stockman as their archenemy, are either leaving or have been pushed aside. Stockman has been giving new deference to Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, by carefully briefing him on the latest thinking at OMB. A rising White House favorite, Regan used to scoff at the "35-year-old kid." Since the Atlantic article, they get along just fine.

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