Californians Hope to Sway Bush on Cuts in Federal Budget

California congressmen and lobbyists on Tuesday asked President-elect Bush to modify President Reagan’s final budget, which they protested would slash federal funds for numerous programs in the state, ranging from mass transit to reparations for Japanese-Americans.

“California would lose critical monies, as would all other states,” Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), chairman of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation, said in releasing a lengthy analysis of the budget’s impact on California programs.

Under Reagan’s proposals, Los Angeles’ fledgling Metrorail project would suffer a possibly fatal $100-million cut in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, receiving only about $45 million to continue construction.

At the same time, Blythe, Merced and Crescent City probably would lose all airline service under a plan to eliminate federal subsidies for flights to small towns. And San Diego would take a particularly big hit if, as proposed, California loses all $4.5 million in federal “impact aid” for cities that have large military populations.

Meanwhile, another Reagan proposal would make some of the 60,000 aging Japanese-Americans, most of them Californians, wait as much as 60 years to receive full reparations because of their internment in camps during World War II. A law passed last year called for completing the $20,000 payments within 10 years, sponsors noted in denouncing the Reagan plan as “woefully inadequate,” but at the rate proposed in the Administration budget it would take six times as long to complete the payments.

Not all of the Reagan budget was bad news for the state, however. For example, the University of California said that it would benefit from large proposed increases for AIDS research and for Pell grants to low-income students.

Reviewing a string of proposed cuts, newly installed House Budget Committee Chairman Leon E. Panetta (D-Monterey) declared that Reagan’s spending plan “continues to unravel the social safety net. . . . It is my hope that Mr. Bush will come to Congress soon with specific proposals to reduce the deficit in a fair, realistic way while addressing the critical priorities, such as child care, Head Start and the environment, which he mentioned in his campaign.”

While Bush may make some modifications, he is expected to follow Reagan’s general outlines when he presents his own budget proposals in coming weeks. However, lobbyists for various California interests expressed hope that Bush would show flexibility if the Democratic-run Congress moves, as it has in the past, to reject many of Reagan’s proposed trims.

“We are anxiously awaiting the release of President-elect Bush’s spending priorities in the hope that he will live up to his promise to become ‘the education President,’ ” said Jenifer Hartog, a Washington lobbyist for the California Department of Education.

While the state’s Democratic congressmen blasted the Reagan blueprint, Republicans generally held their fire.

Sidestepping comment on how the plan would affect California, House Budget Committee member William M. Thomas (R-Bakersfield) said that “the Democrats were never going to say they liked Ronald Reagan’s last budget. What they’d like to see is a Bush budget they can use as an opportunity to promote their idea for a tax increase, which I oppose. The fact is the responsibility for putting together the federal budget is now the Democrats’.”

Identifying cuts that would hit California hard, California Democrats complained in a statement that the Reagan budget “eliminates or phases out the Coastal Zone Management program and sewage treatment grants. It decreases or eliminates support to low-income families for energy assistance, job-training, the Nutrition Education and Training Program, community service block grants and urban development action grants. It significantly reduces federal responsibility for refugees. . . . “

Transportation programs would take a number of blows. Besides cutbacks for Metrorail and small-town airports, money for Amtrak would be eliminated, particularly affecting the popular line between Los Angeles and San Diego.

“Metrorail is not getting excited,” said James F. Seeley, a lobbyist for the city of Los Angeles. “These proposals are pretty much retreads, which Congress has never gone for.”

Causing Concern

UC lobbyist James Savage said the proposed AIDS research hike, while welcomed by some researchers, is causing concern that it will drain money from other biomedical projects.

The proposed boost in NASA research would be a boon to the state’s aerospace industry, he noted.

Savage said that proposed Medicaid and Medicare cuts would be “particularly burdensome” on five hospitals operated by UC because “we pick up the cost of indigent care that other hospitals don’t do.”

He also contended that a proposed funding freeze for UC’s agriculture extension programs would hurt farmers.

Attacks Contract

In another development affecting the state, Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez) called on Bush to reverse a recent Interior Department decision to renew a 40-year California water contract that he said “ignores important environmental and fiscal considerations.”

Miller, a prominent critic of large federal irrigation subsidies to farms, cities and industries, attacked the contract signed with the Friant Unit of the Central Valley Project, which consists of 28 water districts and municipalities.

“Simple renewal of the contract ignores the potential for water conservation and would have a negative impact” on water quality in the San Francisco Bay delta, he said.