Reagan Vows to Fight for Budget, Tax Plans

WASHINGTON — President Reagan, reporting that his “overall health is very good,” vowed Monday to embark on a major campaign after Labor Day to push his budget and tax proposals through a reluctant Congress.

The President particularly promised to “pull out all the stops” to obtain passage of his embattled tax revision program. “There is no higher nor more pressing priority,” he asserted.

Upbeat View Expressed

Reagan summoned to the Oval Office a small group of reporters--a pool selected on a daily rotational basis--to read a statement expressing an upbeat view of last week’s congressional budget action.

“We didn’t get all the (budget) savings we sought, but we held firm on principle,” Reagan contended, explaining that his “principle” was to attack the deficit by cutting government spending, “not by reducing the people’s earnings.”

His assessment contrasted sharply with that voiced last week by Senate Republican leaders, who criticized the President for not taking a bigger bite out of the federal deficit by supporting an oil import tax and a biennial freeze on Social Security benefits.

Reagan clearly had anticipated and was ready to answer reporters’ questions about his health. He disclosed that a lump removed from his nose last week had turned out, on examination, to be cancerous. But the relatively non-threatening skin cancer, caused by exposure to the sun, was not connected to his far more dangerous colon cancer, which was surgically removed on July 13, the President and independent medical experts said.

White House spokesman Larry Speakes, meanwhile, reported that the President spent five hours in the Oval Office Monday, his longest workday since returning to the White House from cancer surgery.

Next Sunday, Reagan will fly to Santa Barbara for a three-week vacation at his ranch, then “launch a major fall offensive” for his budget and tax programs, he told reporters.

After declaring that “the economy’s batteries (are) recharged”--despite the contention of many economists that stagnation has overtaken the economy--the President said: “We’re setting forth with new zest. The road ahead looks clear to a strong job market, with no new tax increases to slow us down and no dark clouds of inflation on the horizon.”

However, the Labor Department reported last Friday that the nation’s overall unemployment rate in July remained stuck at 7.2% for the sixth straight month.

To ‘Go to the People’

Although his outlook was rosy, Reagan added: “There’s much we can and must do to make this a better year.” He pledged to “go to the people and work with Congress to achieve major and much-needed reforms.”

Those “reforms,” he said, include line-item veto power for appropriation measures, such as he possessed as California’s governor, and a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced budget, as each state has.

“We cannot reduce chronic overspending by Congress with a mere carrot of friendly appeals to good intentions,” Reagan said. “We must also be able to bear down with a rod of real discipline.”

The President said that he was looking forward to taking appropriation bills sent to him by Congress this year and “examining each one with my veto pen hovering over every line.”

And, next year, he pledged, “we’re going to continue trying to eliminate programs that have outlived their usefulness.”

Fairer Tax Code Urged

Reagan added that “we cannot abide the injustices and disincentives in the current (tax) code. We must replace it with a new system offering lower marginal tax rates and greater fairness for the American people.”

The President’s controversial tax plan would reduce tax rates but would also erase many current tax deductions, including the popular deductions for state and local taxes.

Meanwhile, Reagan disclosed that Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who was so upset with the President last Tuesday that he refused to attend a meeting with him at the White House, wound up dropping by for a chat late last week on his way out of town.

‘A Good Meeting’

“We had a good meeting,” Reagan said. “We’re in agreement that, yes, the budget resolution we got was not as much as we had hoped. A compromise never is. But we think it came very close to the figures I first proposed in February.”

The budget resolution approved by Congress is intended to reduce the deficit in fiscal 1986 by $55.5 billion to $57.5 billion.