Indecent Acts

Congress returns from recess today to discover the true absurdity of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985, alias Gramm-Rudman. The lawmakers must first find a way out of the Gramm-Rudman quagmire, then get on to a sensible schedule of rational budget cuts and revenue increases. The only rational way is to make the Defense Department reach some tough decisions along with everyone else.

The mindless havoc that Gramm-Rudman brings to the national government by fiat in the current fiscal year can be found in fine print spread over 395 pages of the Federal Register from Jan. 15. The Register contains a report to the Controller of the United States stipulating the automatic cuts that must be made to achieve the $11.7 billion mandated in fiscal 1986 by Gramm-Rudman. These cuts cover only part of the fiscal year, and therefore amount to less than 5% of the portion of the budget in which reductions are mandated. To discover what Gramm-Rudman would do in its first full year of operation, multiply each figure by a factor of nearly five. If the President insists on no defense cuts next year, multiply any domestic item by 10.

While this year’s $2.75 billion for “Star Wars” research was protected from Gramm-Rudman cuts by the Reagan Administration, the automatic reductions include $3 million in disaster relief, $626,000 for international peacekeeping, $5.5 million for federal crop insurance, $12 million for Agriculture Department animal and plant health inspection, $16 million for food-safety inspection, 10 million for flood control, $14 million for the Centers for Disease Control, $26.5 million for the National Cancer Institute, $112 million in all for the National Institutes of Health and $109 million in social services.

There is $45 million for the FBI, $15 million for the Drug Enforcement Agency, $6 million for mine safety, $140 million for the Internal Revenue Service, $83 million for the Postal Service and a blanked-out number for the National Security Agency (classified).

The Defense Department segment of the reduction list goes to ridiculous extremes, down to $1,000 items for Rapid Runway Repair Kits and the Hand Held Laser Rangefinder AN/GU-5.

Since the domestic budget cut is 4.3% across the board, it seems to be fair. However, the cuts do not range all the way across the board. Interest on the federal debt ($143 billion) cannot be cut. Social Security ($200 billion) and a number of programs to aid the poor also, and properly, were exempted. Since 1981, and even before, some domestic programs have been cut far more deeply than others while defense was soaring.

For instance, the general budget category of recreational resources in the Interior Department has been cut by about 18% since 1981. The first round of cuts will take $26.8 million from the $624 million Park Service budget this year, and presumably would trim about $120 million from the 1987 budget under Gramm-Rudman. A Grand Canyon National Park official told The Times’ Maura Dolan last week, “We’re beyond trimming the fat away. We’re closer to the skeleton now.”

The nation can survive a closed campground and live with fewer nature walks. But what cancer research should we sacrifice? Which food safety or mine inspections? Which disaster victims shall we help and which shall we ignore? Who gets flood control and who goes without? Does the FBI respond to one bank robbery but not another? Which elderly shut-ins go without nursing or home-care assistance?

There is talk of short-circuiting the cumbersome budget process this year with a series of summit conferences that would avoid the mayhem that Gramm-Rudman would do to the full-year 1987 budget. This effort should be tried, but it will be fruitless if the White House refuses to participate or continues to insist on 3% real growth in the defense budget while domestic programs are decimated. The White House seems to be gambling that the people don’t care what indecent acts are committed on their government so long as their taxes don’t go up. We’re willing to bet otherwise.