Reagan’s Tax Speech Will Omit Details to Focus News Coverage, White House Says

WASHINGTON â€”  President Reagan’s much-advertised national television address to unveil his tax-simplification plan Tuesday night will be short on details and long on rhetoric in an effort to control the public debate and initial news coverage, the White House conceded Thursday.

The speech long has been awaited by members of Congress and special-interest groups who have been anxious to see Reagan’s final tax-simplification plan, 16 months in the making. Recently, the Administration has tried to pique this curiosity by announcing the speech far in advance and repeatedly referring to it in public statements.

But the details most citizens and interest groups will need to determine precisely how the plan would affect them will not be released until the day after Reagan delivers his Oval Office speech. White House spokesman Larry Speakes said that Treasury Secretary James A. Baker III will provide these details Wednesday at a news conference, in testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee and in a 300-page report.

Broad Outlines

The President will touch only on the broad outlines of his plan--telling viewers that he wants to reduce the top personal tax rate to 35% from 50% and to compress the present 14 tax brackets into just three: 15%, 25% and 35%. He also will talk about boosting the personal exemption to $2,000 from $1,040. And he will give a few illustrations of how his plan would help some typical families and small businesses.

“There’ll be plenty of time later for all the details,� said a White House official who asked not to be identified. “This issue is going to be with us for a long time. We just felt that in the first story, the President’s message ought to get the focus.�

This official and others said that presidential strategists have decided that by withholding details for a day, they can head off immediate criticism of the plan by organized opponents and prevent the news media from concentrating on what many citizens will regard as the proposal’s negative features, such as the elimination of some popular tax deductions.

These advisers also said that they did not want the President’s sales pitch for tax simplification to compete for attention with independent news analyses of how the package would affect various economic groups. Nor did they want the final plan to be contrasted with an original version proposed last December by the Treasury Department but never fully accepted by the President.

‘Keep Your Mouth Shut’

In announcing the White House strategy to reporters, Speakes unsmilingly told one veteran TV network correspondent: “If you just let the President talk and keep your mouth shut, it’ll work fine.�

Baker, meanwhile, told a conference of the National Assn. of Manufacturers that corporations will find the President’s final plan “far less offensive� than the Treasury Department’s original version. He was referring to projections that the earlier plan would have raised business taxes about 35% while lowering levies paid by individuals about 8%.

“There will be a number of specifics in the tax proposal which I think corporations generally will receive with great enthusiasm,� the Treasury secretary said. But he also pointed out that “the percentage of the total tax burden which corporations have borne since 1960 has been steadily declining� and contended that the typical taxpayer would “benefit tremendously� from Reagan’s proposal.

‘Universal Frustration’

Baker, who as White House chief of staff orchestrated Reagan’s major legislative victories in his first term, said Congress should not underestimate the public’s “almost universal frustration� with the current tax system--a dissatisfaction he asserted was rooted in traditional American populism.

“This populism is anti-big government, pro-market and pro-fairness,� Baker said. “Ronald Reagan built his career on this philosophy. He carried 49 states on it (last November), and he can carry tax reform on it.�

Speakes announced that Reagan will embark on a national promotion campaign for his plan after Wednesday’s official unveiling, traveling first to Virginia and Wisconsin on Thursday and Pennsylvania on Friday.