GROUP URGES CUTTING GOVERNMENT WASTE TO CUT TAXES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, April 16, 1993                   TAG: 9304160009
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
GROUP URGES CUTTING GOVERNMENT WASTE TO CUT TAXES
As Americans rushed to beat their tax deadline, a conservative group on Thursday denounced excessive government spending, contending that 34 cents of every individual tax dollar is being wasted.
Citizens Against Government Waste sought to use the final day for filing 1992 tax returns to dramatize a call for broad cuts in spending.
Thomas Schatz, president of the group, said the money wasted on unnecessary government programs is enough to save the average median-income family $2,108 in taxes, or about 34 percent of its tax bill.
With this money "the family could buy groceries for six months, [make] two house payments . . . a down payment on a new car . . . or almost a year's health insurance premiums," Schatz said.
The average worker will have to toil 123 days to pay this year's federal, state and local taxes, the Tax Foundation has said.
The organization said that while "Tax Freedom Day" will come May 3, the same day as in the past three years, things will get worse. State and federal tax increases enacted over the past three years will be felt more as the economy climbs out of recession, said the foundation, which analyzes government spending and taxing.
Virginia's "Tax Freedom Day" was calculated as April 25.
Citizens Against Government Waste has championed the idea that sharp cuts in government spending - and not tax increases - are needed to curb the federal budget deficit.
Schatz acknowledged that some of the programs his group wants to eliminate are not considered waste by everyone.
The group urged the government to cut in half spending on office furniture, stop federal funding for sewage-treatment construction projects, cancel the $8.2 billion supercollider atom smasher in Texas, scrap plans for a space station, cut subsidies that help the poor pay energy bills, reduce the White House staff by one-fourth, step up military base closings, cut regulatory agency budgets to prevent "unnecessary and wasteful" regulations and sell most of the federal government's 1,200 civilian aircraft.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB