Heading for Geneva: "We Have a Strength We Haven't Had Before"

Q  Mr. President, would you like to have annual summits with the Soviet leadership?
A  Both sides have talked about the possibility of additional meetings. I will probably propose—if they don't—that we have an exchange of future meetings in our own countries instead of going to a neutral country.

Q  On an annual basis?
A  I haven't thought particularly about setting the actual time. But I think it would automatically follow that, yes, we'd be talking next year and the year after.

Q  If we could change to domestic issues for a minute: Your proposal for tax reform seems to be flying apart in the House Ways and Means Committee. How can you rescue it?
A  Well, we're trying, and I know that Chairman Rostenkowski is also. But it is true that there are many special interests who are trying to promote changes here and there which I think would water down the whole idea of fairness and simplicity. We have registered our disagreement with a number of those things. And I think that there are also some members of the Congress who don't want tax reform, who like the system the way it is.

Q  Specifically, what parts of tax reform are being watered down?
A  It's still going on up there, and I haven't wanted to make Chair man Rostenkowski's task any more difficult. But my reservations concern the putting back of loopholes that we think should be eliminated. Some of those loopholes were put in for a legitimate reason, but they were put in when tax rates were extremely high. You can take away a loophole, and the reduction of rates that is proposed will give you a tax cut rather than a tax increase, even with the loss of that loophole.

Q  Would you veto a tax-reform bill without major elements such as the elimination of deductions for state and local taxes or leaving the top individual tax rate above 35 percent?
A  I can't make that decision until I see what they come down with. What tax reform must be is, first of all, revenue neutral. It must not be a concealed tax increase—which most people in this country have cynically and with justification come to expect. Tax-reform legislation must be fair, and it must be simple.

Q  Mr. President, you backed the Gramm-Rudman idea of cutting the deficit, but some of your advisers are getting cold feet because they think it will lead to cuts in defense or a tax increase. Where do you stand on that now?
A  The same thing is happening there as is happening with tax reform. The original proposal was a six-year plan of continued decreases aimed at getting a balanced budget. Now proposals are being introduced that I think would subvert the good, sound policy intent of the original Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill. Some in Congress want to make big cuts in defense spending that I don't believe we can afford. Certainly I wouldn't want to go to Geneva with any new defense cuts in my hip pocket.

Q  So the House version of Gramm-Rudman is unacceptable to you?
A  What they're talking about in the Democratic version is unacceptable.

Q  And you've drawn the line at the 3 percent real increase in Pentagon spending for 1987 and 1988 agreed on earlier?
A  Yes. I agreed on that, and I don't think the Congress that passed it and agreed to it should now, in a kind of a sneaky manner, attempt to throw it out.

Q  On another subject, Attorney General Meese says the Supreme Court has not been following original intentions of the Founding Fathers in ruling on such issues as prayer and criminal rights. Some members of the Court have publicly disagreed. What are your views on that?
A  Over recent years, we have had courts that tended to legislate rather than interpret the Constitution. Their ruling against prayer in schools is kind of strange in a body that opens with prayer and that has over its doorway ''In God We Trust."