The Week

(From Time magazine). “The problem of how to deal with the disarming Reagan puzzled and gnawed at him. [Oh Tip O’Neill, the pipes, the pipes are calling] ‘I’ve never been up against a Republican like him,’ he told friends. [From glen to glen, and down the mountain side] It was not that O’Neill had developed any confidence in Reagan as President—or as a thinker. To the contrary, the Speaker returned from White House meetings and told aides that he was astonished at the empty conversations. [The New Deal’s gone, and all the roses fall-ing] When O’Neill raised certain issues, he reported, the President would invariably deflect them to an aide and resume his easy storytelling. Never, declared the disbelieving Speaker, had he seen a President work in such a detached way. [’Tis you, ’tis you, must go and I must bide]”

In the battle for his economic program, President Reagan won the first round, with both House and Senate budget committees shaping the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1982 to fit his tax-and spending-cut proposals. But the fight is far from over. The appropriations committees will have to be kept within the budget guidelines. The tax reductions will have to be shepherded through the House and Senate. And should the economy sour because of high interest rates, concern over the deficit will generate pressures to delay and scale down the tax cut. Should the President’s popularity slip or his negotiators compromise too quickly with his congressional opponents, the Congress could take away in the fall in the second budget resolution for fiscal year 1982 what it gave in the spring in the first.

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(From Time magazine). “The problem of how to deal with the disarming Reagan puzzled and gnawed at him. [Oh Tip O’Neill, the pipes, the pipes are calling] ‘I’ve never been up against a Republican like him,’ he told friends. [From glen to glen, and down the mountain side] It was not that O’Neill had developed any confidence in Reagan as President—or as a thinker. To the contrary, the Speaker returned from White House meetings and told aides that he was astonished at the empty conversations. [The New Deal’s gone, and all the roses fall-ing] When O’Neill raised certain issues, he reported, the President would invariably deflect them to an aide and resume his easy storytelling. Never, declared the disbelieving Speaker, had he seen a President work in such a detached way. [’Tis you, ’tis you, must go and I must bide]”

In the battle for his economic program, President Reagan won the first round, with both House and Senate budget committees shaping the first budget resolution for fiscal year 1982 to fit his tax-and spending-cut proposals. But the fight is far from over. The appropriations committees will have to be kept within the budget guidelines. The tax reductions will have to be shepherded through the House and Senate. And should the economy sour because of high interest rates, concern over the deficit will generate pressures to delay and scale down the tax cut. Should the President’s popularity slip or his negotiators compromise too quickly with his congressional opponents, the Congress could take away in the fall in the second budget resolution for fiscal year 1982 what it gave in the spring in the first.