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

DATE: MONDAY, February 28, 1994                   TAG: 9402280085
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C1   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

TEAMS TAKE THEIR WHACKS AT THE FEDERAL DEFICIT

They called themselves the Debtbusters and after hours of sometimes heated discussion came up with four proposals, only one of which met their goal - a package of spending cuts and tax increases totaling $900 billion.

The winning team offered a whopping $926 billion package, including $458 billion in new revenue.

"Wimps!" one of the winners, Albert Pollard, said as the other three efforts were scrawled on the blackboard.

Ranging from $562 billion to $757 billion, they weren't close to the target.

"Bleeding hearts!" teased Peggy Friedenberg, another winner.

Pollard and Friedenberg were among 16 guinea pigs who showed up Saturday at the University of Richmond to participate in Debtbusters 2000, a program run by a Washington group formed to promote fiscal reform.

The Concord Coalition, started two years ago by former U.S. Sens. Warren Rudman and Paul Tsongas, pays staff members to round up groups of students and residents to play a cut-the-budget game.

Participants were given 61 budget options from which to balance the budget, using a 1993 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office.

Negotiators got a little excited at times, with participants accusing their colleagues of disarming America and starving its children in order to cut the deficit.

"I'm going to move to another country after we do all this," said Richmond resident Friedenberg, a policy analyst for the state Department of Social Services.

"I am, too - one with a military," snapped Melinda Lail, an advertising administrator who lives in Henrico County.

Judy Divers, a legislative liaison for the state Department of Youth and Family Services, went at the job with such gusto that Pollard dubbed her "The Lorena Bobbitt of the Budget."

The debates were earnest: If Uncle Sam cut off National Public Radio, would corporations pick up the slack? What would be the ripple effects if mortgage interest were no longer deductible, or if only a portion were?

The game helped show how tough it can be to make such choices. Fredericksburg resident Bob Bixby, the coalition official who ran the game, said some participants also came close to the Congressional Budget Office's recent estimate that a $600 billion package might do the job, because of some deficit reductions passed last year.