Vitriol in The Rose Garden

By TED GUP

Bill-signing ceremonies in the White House Rose Garden are usually harmonious occasions: as cameras click and whir, the President flashes a broad smile, tosses off a few quips and hands out pens to congressional sponsors. Not so last week. The sponsors squirmed and an unsmiling Ronald Reagan groused as he signed the revised Gramm-Rudman bill, requiring the Federal Government to slash $23 billion from the deficit this fiscal year and to balance the budget by fiscal 1993. Reagan fired salvo after salvo at Capitol Hill's "big spenders" -- read liberal Democrats -- even though the Republicans standing behind him had also put their names on what amounted to a legislative booby trap.

Reagan wanted to veto the measure but could not: it was attached to a bill that raised the nation's debt ceiling to a stratospheric $2.8 trillion. A veto would have cut the Treasury off from its lifeline of borrowed money and forced the Government to begin closing down. By signing the legislation, the President might have to swallow what until now would have made him gag: a cut in defense spending or a hike in taxes, or both. Under the legislative compromise, if Congress and the President cannot agree on how to achieve the $23 billion in savings, half will be sliced from the domestic budget and half from defense.

"Most bill-signing ceremonies are happy occasions," observed Reagan. "This one is not . . . There are some in Congress who think that they have me trapped, that this time I'll have no choice but to raise taxes or gut our defenses." He dismissed talk of capitulation with a curt "Nuts."

"Yes, I'll sign this bill," Reagan said. "And as I do so, from this moment on, the big spenders in Congress will have a fight on their hands."

And a fight it is on nearly every issue, from the budget to the Bork nomination. Once again the White House and the Democratic-controlled Congress are on a collision course. "The record of Ronald Reagan's past two years and the record of the 100th Congress," says House Majority Leader Thomas Foley, "depend upon how we adjust these differences. An approach of no compromise means no legislation."

The struggle over defense policy is also nearing an impasse. Last week the Senate passed a $302 billion Pentagon budget that bristles with restrictive amendments. The bill would require the U.S. to adhere to the original, narrow interpretation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, which limits testing of the Strategic Defense Initiative. Another amendment would ban the Pentagon from building weapons that surpass the numerical limits set by the unratified SALT II. Reagan vowed to veto the bill, but Sam Nunn, the Democrat who chairs the Armed Services Committee, did not flinch: "President Reagan can veto it and veto it and veto it, but he cannot pass an appropriations bill, he cannot fund the national security of this country until he signs something into law."

Many in Congress are also incensed over Reagan's refusal to invoke the 1973 War Powers Resolution, even though U.S. ships are escorting tankers through the Persian Gulf and have seized an Iranian ship caught laying mines. The frustrations have contributed to a view that Reagan has little regard for Congress.

"This Administration fails to grasp that Congress has a role to play in foreign policy," says Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd. "It wants Congress to roll over and play dead. The President thinks Congress is his whipping boy. He won't budge on the budget, and he won't do anything to help Congress lower the national deficit."

On the revised Gramm-Rudman bill, Congress simply outmaneuvered the President. Treasury Secretary James Baker convinced Reagan that a refusal to sign the debt-reduction measure could jeopardize international financial stability. Only reluctantly did the President reject an appeal by Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger to veto the bill at any cost. White House Chief of Staff Howard Baker and congressional Republicans argued that the President could still sustain vetos of any subsequent tax bills. Congress would then have to muster a two-thirds vote in favor of a tax increase in an election season.

Hostility to a tax increase was evidentlast Thursday, when Republicans on the House Ways and Means Committee challenged the need for a $12 billion hike and refused even to discuss specific ways of raising revenue until the figure was reduced. Yet without a tax increase, no one pretends to know how the budget goals will be reached. "Beats me," said Senate Republican Leader Robert Dole.

The idea of turning the Rose Garden signing into a display of Executive vitriol came from White House Aide Thomas Griscom. Baker stood at a distance from the ceremony, a study in discomfort. "Howard Baker was dying out there," said a White House aide. As the former Republican majority leader in the Senate, Baker was widely expected to bridge the gap between Congress and the White House when he signed on with Reagan last February. In an atmosphere that encourages confrontation rather than compromise, however, Baker's talent for finding common ground has gone largely untapped.

Indeed, Baker frequently points out that "Ronald Reagan is President and I am not." The President, he has found, is very much his own man. "I have given him the best advice I could," Baker told TIME last week. "I've counseled with him as he wished. In the final analysis, he makes presidential decisions." Baker does not speak of Reagan's confrontational style with Congress, but rather of what he calls his boss's "central core of conviction."

Despite his stubbornness, Reagan has a knack for turning almost any situation to his advantage. Hours before his angry speech against the Gramm- Rudman bill, he told a meeting of the International Monetary Fund that the legislation was a "signal that America was not backing down from its responsibilities." And because the new law delays the deepest budget cuts until after Reagan has left the Oval Office, the very measure that is a booby trap for him today may ensnare a Democratic successor tomorrow.

With reporting by Barrett Seaman/Washington