DISARMAMENT a Soviet president Konstantin Chernenko offered to renew peace talks with the U.S. if the U.S. would withdraw its first strike nuclear missiles from Western Europe, on the Soviet Union’s doorstep. But the Rea- gan administration immediately rejected the offer. In an interview published Apr. 9 in the newspaper Pravda, the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party charged that Reagan is blocking every effort to halt the arms race. As if to second Chernenko’s charge, White House press spokesman Larry Speakes said Reagan would make no “concessions” to bring the world back from the brink of thermonuclear war. emphasized that the issue of verification raised by the Reagan administration is a “camouflage” for the U.S. refusal to sign any disarmament agreement. : When asked if he saw any positive changes in U.S. policy, Chernenko said the world situation “remains very danger- ous, and this is explained by the U.S. administration’s continued gamble on mil- itary force, on the attainment of military superiority, on the imposition of its order of things on other peoples. “Even if peaceloving rhetoric is some- times heard from Washington, it is impos- "sible, however hard one tries, to discern behind it any signs whatsoever of readi- In the interview, Chernenko also “Chernenko reiterates stand on arms talks — “The real road to negotiations...is to restore the world to the situation that existed before the deployment of the cruise and Pershing missiles.” . ness to back up these words with practical deeds,” Chernenko said. “In other words, the introduction of new words does not mean a new policy.” He said the White House was showing no awareness of the danger and no res- traint in its accelerating arms buildup. “And it is not at all by chance that the U.S. has deliberately frustrated the very process of limiting and reducing nuclear arms and that it torpedoed the talks both of strategic arms and on nuclear arms in Europe,” Chernenko said. “Our contacts with the American side also show that no positive changes have taken place in the position of the U.S. on these cardinal questions. “While continuing its arms buildup and the deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles, the Reagan administration says that it is ready to resume talks,” Cher- nenko pointed out. “But what is there to talk about — about how many and specifically what missiles targeted against the Soviet Union and our allies can the U.S. deploy in Europe?” he asked. “Such talks are not for us,” Chernenko stated. He added, “There is no need to con- vince us about the usefulness of dialogue, the usefulness of talks. The moment the U.S. and the other NATO countries who are acting at one with it take measures to restore the situation that had existed before the dpeloyment of the new Ameri- can missiles in Western Europe was started, the Soviet Union will not be found wanting. Such is the real road to negotiations,” He also emphasized, in reply to U.S. charges that the Soviet Union is awaiting the outcome of the 1984 presidential elec- tion, that the Soviet policy is not based on who is in office. “Throughout the history of Soviet- American relations we have dealt with var- ious administrations in Washington,” he said. “In those cases when realism and a responsible approach to relations with the Soviet Union were shown on the part of the American leadership, matters pro- ceeded normally. This had a favorable effect on the general situation in the world as well. But in the absence of such a realis- tic approach our relations worsened accordingly. ‘tion of nuclear arms. “Today as well, we are for having NOt mal, stable relations with the US., rela tions based on equality, equal security and non-interference in each other’s inter affairs,” he said. j Chernenko said the U.S. was blocking arms talks in all areas, not just on strategie arms and missiles in Europe. He said this was true in regard to a ban on arms 10 outer space, prohibition of chemical wea pons and ratification of the two USe Soviet treaties limiting undergroun nuclear testing. The two were signed almost a decade ago, he said, but the Reagan administra- tion is blocking ratification suppo ace because of verification difficulties. course the matter here has nothing to ¢° with verification — the signed treaties contain most thoroughly worked-out pr visions on this score,” Chernenko said. “The matter lies somewhere else — 2 Washington’s refusal to bind its han with any limitations whatsoever that would impede the building up and perfec “I touched on the question of verifica- tion also because the U.S. makes recours€ to it whenever it does not want an agree ment,” he said. “When there is a 5 desire to reach agreement on measures 0 arms reduction and disarmament, verifi- cation has not been and cannot be 4% obstacle.” ‘Reagan budget: ‘let ’em eat missiles’ By VICTOR PERLO U.S. president Reagan’s new budget gives a massive push towards the military sector of the economy, shifting outlays from wel- fare to warfare even faster than during his first three years in office. And along with the upward thrust in the military budget, the national debt and the interest payments on » it will also go up, while spending for peo- ple’s needs will toboggan downhill. The Council of Economic Advisers, in its Economic Report to the president, stated: “Between fiscal years 1980 and 1984 real government spending on all non-defence activities except Social Security and medi- care will have fallen by 12.5 per cent. This real four-year decline, which includes every- thing from entitlement programs to the administrative costs of running government departments, is absolutely unprecedented.” Reagan plans for such spending to decline from 9.3 per cent of the gross national product (GNP) in 1980. (years referred to in this article are fiscal years, which begin in October of the previous calendar year) to 5.5 per cent in 1989, a relative decline of 41 per cent. And the decline is even more drastic for items that benefit the working people, inasmuch as expenditures to finance government bureau- cracy do not decline, and subsidies to busi- ness increase. If Reagan has his way, the “national defence” budget authority is to increase by $48 billion in 1985, reaching $313.4 billion. That’s more than double the $19.5 billion rise that Congress authorized for 1984. And it’s more than the increase in military spend- ing in any year of the Vietnam War, even adjusting for the change in the price level. Once budget authority is voted, it will almost surely be spent, even if there is some delay — ships and many other items take several years to complete after the funds are allocated. So military spending in a given year is considerably less than the new authority for that year. In 1980, the last full year before Reagan, military spending was $131 billion. Reagan proposes $264 billion for 1985, more than twice as much, and $409 billion for 1989, more than three times as much. The 1989 figure exceeds the entire federal budget for as recent a year as 1977. The increase for 1985 alone amounts to 10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, APRIL 25, 1984 REAGAN’S BUDGET COMPARISON BETWEEN MILITARY* (PLUS NET INTEREST) _ AND CIVILIAN* OUTLAYS (PER CENT OF GROSS NATIONAL PRODUCT) % OF GNP 12.0 2 noo kK 10.4 ties | 10 = CIVILIAN eee cy: 9.3 1o., | | Be }rol |< ‘paar } Ho | CIVILIAN Lgeaige | i 2] |= 7.5 ees ae aa CIVILIAN er geen z 5.5 6 g x 4 © ~ (oe) =A | | > te a te 2— = < < a - a = = = = ) 1980 1984 1989 CIVILIAN OUTLAYS MILITARY PLUS MILITARY PLUS INTE- EXCEED MILITARY PLUS INTEREST INTEREST EXCEEDS CIVILIAN OUTLAYS REST MORE THAN DOUBLE CIVILIAN * MILITARY INCLUDES DEPARTMENT OF DEFENCE PLUS BUDGET-DEFINED “NATIONAL INTEREST” MILITARY— RELATED OUTLAYS BY OTHER AGENCIES: CIVILIAN OUT- LAYS DO NOT INCLUDE SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE. 18 per cent, or 13 per cent in “real” terms (with the estimated inflation factor taken into account). Congress cannot be expected to cut it significantly unless there is a major escalation in mass struggles against this outrage. ~ The military increase is concentrated in material designed for a first strike and for invasions of developing countries. Budget authority for procurement of weapons and ammunition increases 25 per cent; for research and development of new, destabil- izing weapons, 26 per cent; and for produc- tion of nuclear bombs and missiles by the Department of Energy, 19 per cent. The budget contains $64.5 billion of pro- posed spending outside the Department of Defence for military-related programs (most of which are dubbed “national inter- est programs” in the budget document), covering everything from “aid” to Central America to “security assistance” to the FB In the new budget Reagan proposes 10 increase spending for these items by $47. billion, over previously budgeted levels, for | the five-year period 1985-89. At the same time, he proposes to slash previously budgeted spending for strictly civilian programs by $144.4 billion over the five-year period. Then, in a crude statistical fraud, the Reagan budget gravely understates te likely growth in the national debt and the interest burden. While even he for that the public debt will rise 82 per cent from 1983 to 1989 —to $2.1 trillion — he allows for an increase of only 41 per cents half as fast, in net interest costs. Thats based on a series of extreme assumptions: including a very sharp drop in the shor term interest rate from the current 9 per cent to 5.1 per cent in 1989, The budget admits that, with interest rates unchanged and some moderation over-optimistic economic forecasts, the net interest burden will rise to approximately $230 billion in 1989, or $100 billion mor than specified in the budget. Of course, that is so, the deficit will rise to at least $3 billion, as forecast by the Congressioné Budget Office, and the national debt approach $3 trillion. | On this more realistic basis, the interest burden will jump from 2 per cent of the GNP in 1980 — before Reagan — to 4.4 per cent in 1989, And the interest burden is almost all for war. Because the rise in the military budget is one of two main items accounting for soaring deficits and interest require ments — the other is slashed taxes on the - rich and their corporations. The combined dollar cost of interest and the military in 1989 prices, $686 billion, will amount of $2,766 per capital, or $11,065 pet family of four. In one way or another, through direct and indirect taxes, inflation, cuts in- public services and real wages, workers and non-managerial salaried employees will bear this entire burden. The first step in averting this disaster is to toss Reagan out of the White House: Victor Perlo is a staff columnist for the New York Daily World.