Reagan Wants L.A. Metro Rail Funding Killed

President Reagan on Saturday denounced federal financial support for the Los Angeles Metro Rail project as an example of “a ton of fat in this trillion-dollar government” and said the funding must be killed to help achieve budget cuts required by federal deficit reduction law.

Although Reagan Administration officials have long been critical of the rail project, the speech marked the first time the President himself has publicly opposed the proposed $3.3-billion, 18.6-mile downtown Los Angeles-to-San Fernando Valley subway. The federal share of the project is about $2 billion.

Reagan, delivering his weekly radio speech from the Oval Office, said $38 billion in non-defense spending cuts that he has proposed for 1987 amounts to 5 cents on every dollar of the budget open to reduction.

“If Congress can’t cut 5 cents on the dollar, they should never again utter a word about budget deficits,” Reagan said. “Let’s face it, there’s a ton of fat in this trillion-dollar government.

“I’m talking about government spending over $2 billion for a Los Angeles mass transit system--about as much as government could collect in revenue from all the individual income taxes paid in the state of Mississippi this year,” Reagan said.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Tom Bradley said he found the President’s remarks puzzling. He noted that Reagan had signed legislation in December that contained authorization to release $101 million in federal funds for Metro Rail in 1986.

‘Quick to Change’

“It’s pretty quick to have that kind of change of heart,” Bradley told reporters at the Democratic Party state convention.

“We’re still very positive about ground breaking,” the mayor said. City and transit officials have said they hope to break ground on the first 4.4-mile section of the system this year.

Nikolas Patsaouras, president of the board of the Southern California Rapid Transit District, which would build the subway, also defended the project and said: “The $2-billion commitment represents funding spread over the next 10 years; it won’t be $2 billion out of the budget in one year.

“The federal funding for the project will improve the lives of millions of people, and I don’t see why the citizens of Southern California don’t deserve a mass transit system that every other major metropolitan city in the nation enjoys,” Patsaouras said.

“I think it’s kind of sad that he would single out L.A.,” said Gordana Swanson, vice president of the RTD board. “Los Angeles taxpayers have helped pay for transit systems all over the country. Now suddenly we’re being told that doesn’t count. I find the President’s comment difficult to take.”

Reagan’s fiscal 1987 budget proposes that Congress cancel the $225 million already voted for Metro Rail. The budget would consolidate separate federal highway and transit aid programs into block grants to state and local governments, at well below current appropriations. California and Los Angeles would be free, if they chose, to use part of those grants to aid in building the subway project.

In a booklet accompanying the budget, the Administration singled out the proposed 18.6-mile Los Angeles subway as an example of “highly expensive systems, paid for by all taxpayers for the benefit of a few, which we no longer can afford.”

In his remarks Saturday, Reagan made only an indirect reference to Friday’s federal court decision striking down as unconstitutional the triggering mechanism in the Gramm-Rudman balanced-budget law--a ruling advocated by the Administration and one that will be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Whatever the outcome of the legal challenge, “we intend to go forward with our plan to bring the budget into balance by 1991,” the timetable set by Gramm-Rudman, Reagan said.

Democratic Response

In the Democratic response to Reagan’s address, Sen. Lawton Chiles (D-Fla.) predicted that Congress will reject Reagan’s plan to make 37% of the budget cuts in health programs. Under the Administration’s budget, defense has a 12% increase, and “yet there are cuts made in all of the domestic programs,” he said.

Chiles, ranking minority member of the Senate Budget Committee, called “unthinkable” the automatic cuts of about 20% that would take effect across the board under Gramm-Rudman if Congress failed to achieve the required spending reduction by October. Despite controversy over the choices, Chiles said he sensed determination from Republicans and Democrats in both houses of Congress that “this is a job that this year we have to do.”

Reagan said the Administration plans to achieve part of the $38 billion in spending cuts “by holding a little garage sale to get rid of some of our business ventures operating under government subsidies that are better left to the private sector. We’re going to sell our ‘train set,’ better known as Conrail. It’s high time government got out of the railroad business,” Reagan said.

While the President reiterated his oft-expressed opposition to raising taxes to help cut the deficit, Chiles cited Reagan’s recent comment that he might accept an oil import tax.

“I don’t think anybody in the Senate on the Democratic or Republican side is talking about raising anybody’s tax rates,” Chiles said. “We’re talking about having everybody pay their fair share.”

He cited the proposed imposition of a minimum corporate income tax as a means of achieving such “a fair share.”

Times Staff Writers Janet Clayton and John Balzar contributed to this report.