OFFER `REALISTIC BUDGET,' SENATE DEMO TELLS BUSH

Sen. James Sasser, D-Tenn., urged President-elect George Bush Saturday to get President Reagan to submit a "realistic budget" and not submit to Congress a "scorched earth" document that eliminates needed domestic programs.

Sasser, who easily won re-election earlier this month, is slated to become the new chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, succeeding Sen. Lawton Chiles, D-Fla., who is retiring.Sasser said the submission of a realistic budget in January would be one of three steps that Bush could take to "send the right signals" to Congress and the financial community.

The Tennessee senator said Bush "should get the Reagan administration to submit a realistic budget to the Congress this January - not a scorched earth budget that does away with needed domestic programs, not a document that makes a shrill political statement but is dead on arrival in practical fact."

Sasser, in the Democratic response to Reagan's weekly radio address, said Bush should give a "fair hearing" to the National Economic Commission, which is trying to reach a consensus on how to deal with budget deficits.

Sasser also said Bush should meet, before he is inaugurated, with leaders in Congress in a "meeting that should aim specifically at getting to the common ground, the objectives we all share, with regard to fiscal policy."

"These are the kinds of meaningful actions that will command the confidence of the international financial community," Sasser said. "They will help put to rest the rumors of early conflict between the Congress and the next president.