Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 20, 1994 TAG: 9412200094
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Chicago Tribune
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Clinton, Vice President Al Gore and heads of five agencies unveiled more than $20 billion in federal cutbacks and downsizing over the next five years. The measures include privatizing public housing and the air-traffic control system to help pay for middle-class tax cuts.
All that may not be enough for GOP members with grander visions of dismantling much of the bureaucracy they long have despised.
If Republicans have their way, some departments such as Commerce or Education may be eliminated, a move Clinton is resisting. Because the Republican tax-cut plan is nearly twice as large as the president's, deeper GOP cutbacks and downsizing could be in the offing next year.
In cutting back government programs to pay for a middle-class tax cut, Clinton has been criticized for political pandering and risking an increase in the deficit. Gore and Budget Director Alice Rivlin denied this, saying the tax cut is needed to help those who have felt left out of the economic recovery.
Even in offering details of his proposals, Clinton and his advisers did not make a full accounting of how they will slash another $50 billion from the deficit to help pay for his tax cut and more deficit reduction. Those government-wide reductions will be outlined in his budget next year, they promised.
Clinton's plans to reorganize and overhaul the bureaucracy build on the ``reinventing government'' program he offered months ago.
Clinton and Gore made it clear they do not favor eliminating departments. Gore said he had taken an intense look at whether departments like Commerce were needed at all. ``The answer in each case, was yes, but some of what they're doing now is not needed and a lot of what they're doing now can be done in a lot better way and for less money.''
Public housing projects would be turned over to private hands in three to five years, with the poor receiving vouchers and deciding where they want to live. States and local governments would receive new transportation block grants.
Air-traffic control would be turned over to an ``Air Traffic Corporation'' funded by user fees, an idea that Transportation Secretary Federico Pena said would improve ``the service and safety for users" and cut the federal payroll "by about 40,000 employees.''
The Naval Petroleum Reserve, a federally owned oil field in Elk Hills, Calif., bought in World War I to provide fuel to battleships, also will be sold and operated privately, as will federal power marketing agencies that sell publicly generated power from such utilities as the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The Energy Department would feel the brunt of the cuts, $10.6 billion over five years, with Transportation next at $6.7 billion. In Energy, uranium not needed for defense purposes would be sold for commercial power reactors, and research programs would be cut by requiring more cost-sharing with the private sector. In addition to thousands of federal employees who will be laid off in Energy, the number of workers under contract to the department would be reduced by 15,000.
In HUD, 60 programs would be consolidated into three, including the housing voucher program, which Secretary Henry Cisneros said would ``transform public housing as we know it'' and give poor families more of a choice of where they want to live. An Affordable Housing Fund would set up flexible funding so cities and states could develop, acquire and rehabilitate housing for the needy.
Gore said he and Clinton ran on many of these ideas in 1992. ``We have accelerated it, we have speeded it up, and we will continue to do that,'' he said.
But the vice president added that with deregulation and reorganization of many agencies, ``in no case will health or safety be compromised one whit. They will be enhanced.''
by CNB