Federal Spending and Tax Cuts

In “Administration Sees a ‘Reinvented’ HUD” (Dec. 20), Housing Secretary Henry Cisneros is quoted as “speaking with startling candor” because he admits that “many aspects of this department are simply indefensible.” Your reporter matter-of-factly notes that over the 30-plus years of its existence, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has been “riddled by scandals and bureaucratic incompetence.” However, close attention to the comments of Cisneros reveals that he doesn’t plan on taking us boldly where no one has gone before. Instead, HUD’s “$30 billion annual budget is to be cut $800 million over a five-year period.”

An agency characterized as evidencing 30 years of lies, deception and incompetence and whose officials had what a HUD spokesperson now describes as a “slavish loyalty to non-performing programs” can, nonetheless, currently only find unnecessary spending of (give me a drum roll!) 2.7% of its annual budget, and even that requires five years to achieve!

The present formula (i.e. finding 2.7% savings after 30 years of mismanagement) indisputably means that, left to its own devices, a “reinvented” HUD will require something in excess of 200 years to produce a modest 20% savings. Regrettably, but obviously, this is nothing more than an Administration public-relations ploy for the gullible and it will fall on Congress, alone, to “reinvent” HUD.

ERNIE LAZAR

San Francisco

* From “Clinton Targets Five Agencies to Offset Tax Plan” (Dec. 20) and other articles, it is clear that, with the incentive of actual Republican tax proposals certain this month, only a few weeks have been required for the Clinton Administration to locate significant budget reductions which can be made with little “pain.” Just think how much “good” could have been accomplished in the last two years if he had been serious about his campaign promises!

However, the entire subject of “tax cuts” (both Democratic and Republican proposals) is absolutely insane! Anyone with a brain knows that balancing budgets is absolutely the most important thing that the country needs now. The talk of a balanced budget amendment is also crazy without clearly identifying how to create a balance and a God-given promise that the country will never again have a war or other emergency.

What we need is to win our independence from the (largely) foreign investors and “bond markets,” which so tightly restrict our policies through their threat to the new debt constantly being generated, not to mention the rollover of the monstrous old debt (which now costs us about 25% of our tax dollars). One benefit of even a convincing step toward a balanced budget would be a structural reduction in interest rates. Once the budget is balanced, then it will be time to consider dividing up any “spoils” which may have been “captured” along the way.

CHARLES W. FOX

Mission Viejo