VIEW FROM WASHINGTON / ROBERT A. ROSENBLATT : Budget-Buster Contest Winner Wields a Torpedo and Scalpel

Americans hate political pork “unless it is spent on them,” writes Glenn Gritzner of Los Angeles, a young Democrat who is willing to take the political heat and keep hacking away at the federal budget.

The intrepid Gritzner is the winner of our Budget-Buster contest, wherein we invited readers to masquerade as new members of Congress and figure out how to pay for the GOP’s “contract with America,” which promises $148 billion in tax cuts for families and business.

It was a perilous mission--picking from a list of possible cuts, justifying them and then explaining how to steer the package between a hostile Congress and a reluctant President. The premise: that Times readers have at least as much savvy as Congress about making the tough choices in spending and taxation.

Wielding his budget scalpel, Gritzner wants to cancel the F-22 fighter, trim military pensions and cancel the space station, to save an aggregate $29 billion. He is blunt about hacking away at NASA: “Americans’ fascination with space has diminished, and this seems too much like a La-La Land type of thing, compared to the money.”

On the domestic side, he would torpedo aid for local mass transit ($11.8 billion), cancel grants for waste-water treatment plants ($13 billion), eliminate federal aid for airports ($9.2 billion), charge market rates for federal hydroelectric power ($4.8 billion), and dump farm price supports ($11.1 billion). He would leave untouched the funds spent to subsidize sales of American farm products abroad, as a means of mollifying farmers stripped of price supports.

Gritzner, an executive assistant at First Interstate Bank, would sell the federal fleet of cars and trucks ($9 billion), get rid of the Amtrak train system subsidy ($3.1 billion) and cut 3% from the Social Security benefits of future retirees ($6 billion).

“This would come under the ‘tough choices’ rhetoric,” says our would-be legislator. “Then the Republicans could bat the ball into Clinton’s court to make him prove he has the guts to sign it.”

Wait, he’s not done. Gritzner wants to make owners of private planes pay more for air traffic control ($7 billion). “Who’s gonna care?” he reasons. “Anybody using a private plane can probably afford it.” Gritzner also would charge interest on college loans before graduation ($9.5 billion).

Then he would risk the wrath of the senior citizens lobby by boosting the Medicare premium $84 a year to save $17.4 billion--”the toughest sell of the bunch,” Gritzner, 24, acknowledges. He would mount an advertising and publicity campaign, make whatever political deals are necessary and, finally, “the President would sign it,” Gritzner predicts. And he would generate another $16.3 billion by forcing Medicare beneficiaries to pay 25% of their doctor bills instead of the current 20%.

Total savings and new revenues: $147.2 billion.

Shared sacrifice is the theme of Gritzner’s budget crusade. The “cuts are pretty well spread around,” he notes, “Midwest (farms), Northeast (rails), California (defense), Florida (elderly)--so everyone would have to take a hit.”

He deftly sidesteps some political minefields by refusing to skip the annual cost-of-living hike for federal civilian and military retirees and the folks on Social Security, and he does not trim welfare grants for the richest states. With an acute sense of the dangers of bad publicity, he won’t touch the money to help poor people pay electric and gas utility bills, either. “Wait until the first 82-year-old grandmother in Chicago dies from cold weather because she couldn’t afford to pay her heating bill,” he cautions.

Send me your T-shirt size, Glenn; you’ve won the grand prize--a genuine, tacky Washington souvenir shirt.

And thanks to the rest of our readers for their ideas, many of which go far beyond the modest list I presented recently, drawn from House Republican budget experts and the Congressional Budget Office.

Here’s a sampler of your ingenuity:

* Dr. Garold Faber of Redondo Beach wants to increase taxes on gasoline, cigarettes and alcohol, impose a tax of $1 per pound on cars weighing more than 1,000 pounds and reduce the home mortgage deduction on a sliding scale.

* Carol Lightwood in Santa Barbara says the federal government should “buy all their tools from Sears, which guarantees lifetime replacement for their Craftsman line. . . . All it would take would be a one-time investment, and the budget for tools for the military, Interior Department, Agriculture Department, etc., could be eliminated for at least 20 years.”

* Vera E. Streeter of Beaumont, who “remembers vividly how this country was pre-FDR,” wants to scrap the home mortgage deduction. “It is not fair to all the people,” she says. “Renters do not get that large interest deduction.”

* M. G. Myers of La Verne wants all federal workers to take a 3 1/2% salary cut--with a 5% cut for Congress--and forgo any raises for three years. Americans enjoying Social Security and other entitlements would skip their annual cost-of-living raise every fourth year.

* Lloyd E. Fritz of Seal Beach wants the military to “stand down for one day a month (no unnecessary flights, vehicle movements, etc.)” until the deficit comes under control.

* Tom Lovelace of Panorama City, who describes himself as an independent socialist utopian libertarian, wants to stop all foreign aid, start a national lottery to pay for entitlement programs, legalize all illegal drugs and tax them, and stop government benefits such as Social Security and unemployment insurance for anyone making more than $50,000 a year.

* Finally, John Theodore Stenvall of Coronado wants to sell the Postal Service and Amtrak, reform taxes by eliminating deductions and imposing a single income tax rate no higher than 30%, and require arbitration to settle legal disputes. His program, he says, will produce “wise individuals who are immune to evil, disinterested in self advantages and certain of the values in heart and mind.”