Stockman Calls L.A. Metro Rail ‘Foolish’ Waste

Budget Director David A. Stockman, launching the Reagan Administration’s drive to sell its budget package on Capitol Hill, lashed out at Los Angeles’ proposed Metro Rail subway system Monday as a program that would be “foolish for us, as federal taxpayers who are bankrupt, to get into.”

Stockman, estimating that Metro Rail would cost “$180 million a mile, if you can imagine that staggering number,” told the Senate banking subcommittee for housing and community development programs: “We shouldn’t get started. We shouldn’t be out there making promises . . . that the money will be there, because it won’t.

“If you add that system to all the other new (rail systems) that are in the pipeline, we would have to come up with $19 billion at the federal level to finish,” Stockman said. “Set aside the (rail start-up) program and kill it, because it is economically disastrous.”

The “new start” transit subsidy program, from which Metro Rail backers hope to eventually obtain more than $2 billion in federal funds, is among dozens of government programs marked for extinction under a deficit-reduction package proposed by the White House and the Senate Republican leadership.

The compromise package, which aims to slash $52 billion from a federal deficit projected to exceed $220 billion in fiscal 1986, also includes curbs on such basic federal programs as Social Security.

Stockman particularly criticized such programs as Metro Rail and Urban Development Action Grants, which would use scarce federal funds for local endeavors. “The idea of hurting the national economy to help the local economies no longer makes any sense,” he said.

Stockman and White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan also met privately Monday with Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) to plan their strategy for winning approval of the compromise package when it goes before the full Senate next week. Regan said after the session that he believes the proposal can gain enough support to overcome opposition from several powerful interest groups, but he added: “We’ll have to see.”

Budget Office

Meanwhile, the White House budget office issued revised projections showing that improved economic conditions will have little impact on the forecasts that it made earlier this year. Deficits under the Administration’s original budget plan were estimated to remain at more than $140 billion in 1988, President Reagan’s last year in office.

The deficit for the current fiscal year, which runs through Sept. 30, now is estimated at $213.3 billion, down $8.9 billion from the projection contained in the official budget released in February.

Projections Revised

The reasons for the changes include modestly higher tax collections, based on expectations that personal incomes will exceed earlier projections, and slightly smaller federal spending, generally because of technical changes in estimates.

The impact of the deficit-reduction package agreed upon by Reagan and the Senate Republican leadership in the Senate was not included in the figures.