Budget Office Reportedly Plans to Cut Funds for Space Station

Facing the need to make $50 billion in spending cuts, the White House reportedly has proposed cutting NASA’s fiscal 1987 budget request for the space station project and selling four federally owned regional power agencies.

Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine said that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration is appealing the Office of Management and Budget’s proposed $480-million cut, which would delay the space station by three years.

NASA hopes to have a permanently manned space station in operation by 1994 at the latest. The OMB proposal, if approved, would delay that until 1997, the magazine said.

The Administration is also proposing to sell the Bonneville Power Administration in Oregon and three other federally owned regional power agencies in the next fiscal year, the New York Times reported Monday.

The proposals are part of the President’s effort to sell federal assets and transfer programs to private industry, officials said.

The affected agencies provide electric power to millions of people in Western and Southern states, whose lawmakers are expected to oppose the proposed sales.

Squabbles over what programs to cut has forced President Reagan to decide a handful of key disputes between federal agency directors and the White House budget office over next year’s package of proposed spending cuts, Administration officials said.

The officials, who spoke only on condition that they not be identified, said battles over sweeping cuts in health and housing programs are among the unresolved issues requiring a presidential decision.

Only a few Cabinet members have appealed to Reagan specific cuts proposed by Budget Director James C. Miller III, OMB spokesman Edwin Dale said.

Dale would not say which Cabinet officials or what issues were involved. However, he said that the internal budget review process is in its final stages and that most disputes over spending cuts have already been settled short of the President’s intervention.

Reagan will submit his budget for fiscal year 1987 to Congress in early February. Miller has said that to meet deficit-reduction targets of the recently enacted Gramm-Rudman budget-balancing measure, approximately $50 billion in budget cuts will be required in fiscal 1987.