Mayors Calling for Repeal of Deficit-Reduction Law : Cities: The leaders say urban programs would be the first to be hit by Gramm-Rudman cuts. They also seek a lower Social Security tax.

America’s mayors Sunday gave initial approval to a broad and costly domestic agenda that asks Congress to repeal the Gramm-Rudman deficit-reduction law and to cut Social Security taxes for nearly 120 million workers.

The more than 70 resolutions approved by the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ key policy committee contain repeated pleas for a multibillion-dollar infusion of federal funds for anti-drug, housing, education and anti-poverty programs.

The resolutions endorsed Sunday will go before the full conference of more than 200 mayors Wednesday. But the panel’s decisions are rarely changed significantly in those votes, which set the lobbying agenda for the organization’s Washington staff.

The mayors, who have spent much of the first three days of their six-day annual meeting criticizing the federal government for slashing aid to cities, said repealing Gramm-Rudman would force lawmakers to confront the deficit.

“Too many of our members of Congress are using this as a crutch to hide some of the true problems of our economy,” said Mayor Paul Soglin of Madison, Wis. “A series of budget gimmicks have been implemented.”

Under Gramm-Rudman, automatic spending cuts take effect if Congress and the White House do not meet specified deficit-reduction targets. The mayors complained that city-level services would be the first to feel the automatic cuts.

Conference staff said the mayors group--if the full conference endorses the proposal as expected--would be the first organization of elected officials to call for repeal of Gramm-Rudman.

In calling for the Social Security payroll tax to be cut from 7.65% to 6.71%, the mayors panel also called on Congress to remove the cap on outside earnings of Social Security recipients and stop using the balance in the Social Security trust fund to mask the true size of the federal deficit.

Also included in one tax-related resolution approved Sunday was a statement opposing a capital gains tax cut favored by President Bush.

Throughout this year’s meeting, big-city mayors have been urging their colleagues to be more militant in their lobbying of Washington and to lay claim to a good chunk of expected defense savings by warning that urban tensions are reaching a boiling point because of cash-poor anti-poverty programs.

Scuttled Sunday was a bid by some mayors to call for a constitutional amendment that cities receive a “fair and fixed” percentage of federal revenues if Congress refuses to pass a law mandating the revenue sharing.

That idea had sparked a split Saturday between conference committees on human development and urban economic policy, with the latter group prevailing in getting the amendment language deleted.