Early Budget Look Indicates Plenty of California Benefits

Federal budgets are like Christmas stockings: The deeper you dig, the more you find. And while experts will spend days combing the $1.7-trillion package President Clinton sent to Congress on Monday, early assessments are that California will get plenty of goodies--and a couple lumps of coal.

The first balanced budget in 30 years seeks to expand funding for education and health care, extend a $2.2-billion tax credit for the high-tech industry, restore food stamps for legal immigrants and boost border control funding to stem the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly criminals.

It holds at last year’s levels funding for domestic programs like housing, job training, community development and clean water--domestic services that in past years have been cut to ribbons.

“This is a good budget for the city of Los Angeles,” said Mayor Richard Riordan, in Washington on Monday to meet with officials on transportation and the environment. “We’re happy the federal government has held the line.”

Worrisome items include a 65% cut in highway trust funds, and an outlay of just $20 million for the Santa Ana River flood-control project. “It easily needs at least twice that,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-Redlands), co-chairman of the state’s delegation.

Largest Portion of Youngsters in U.S.

Still, the budget offers plenty of presents for California, which by virtue of sheer size has more children, elderly, immigrants and other demographic groups that federal programs tend to target.

Clinton’s focus on education and child care portends well for a state with the largest portion of youngsters in the nation. With 12% of the overall population, California has 14.2% of the country’s children under 5 and a similar swell of school-aged youngsters.

The budget seeks to increase enrollments of children in Medicaid and the recently passed children’s health insurance bill. California has an estimated 500,000 children eligible for Medicaid, but not enrolled.

The president wants to double the number of children participating in Head Start or receiving federal child-care subsidies; create a fund for community programs that improve child-care safety and learning for children through age 5; and expand money for after-school care.

But perhaps the biggest gifts would come in the classroom, including new funds for teacher training, school construction, dropout prevention and programs targeted to help Latino students.

According to congressional aides, 35,000 of California’s 240,000 teachers are not fully credentialed; 43% of California schools have at least one building in need of extensive repair (the third-highest in the nation); and one in six California students will drop out of school. The state has 1.2 million students limited in English proficiency, a number bigger than the total student population of all but seven other states.

“School construction, room size reduction, all stand to benefit California greatly,” said Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Los Angeles), co-chair of the California delegation. “What I like most about this budget is it looks to the future, to what we are going to need not just today but 10 or 20 years from now.”

While Clinton’s proposed restoration of food stamps for legal immigrants was long sought by Southern California leaders, particularly Democrats, the budget blueprint also throws a bone to immigration restrictionists by adding 1,000 new border patrol agents as part of a 10% budget boost to the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Addressing the environment, Interior Department Deputy Secretary John Garamendi said Clinton has set aside money to buy a number of parklands, including $14 million for wildlife refuges in the San Francisco Bay, $3 million for similar refuges in San Diego, $3 million for California desert lands, $1 million for the Santa Rosa mountains in Palm Springs and $1 million for the Mojave National Park.

In addition, California would get nearly $30 million of a $100-million national effort on water recycling, including $10 million in Los Angeles, $13 million in San Diego and $1 million to launch a program in Orange County.

Clinton’s proposal, however, is just a point of departure, noted Republicans who control Congress.

Rep. Ron Packard (R-Oceanside), for example, warned that the budget would be “dead on arrival” if it raised any taxes. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach) lambasted the president for adding $90 billion in new taxes and expanding spending while the economy is booming.

Some Other Benefits Sought by Budget

Among other benefits sought by the Clinton budget that Californians praised Monday:

* $100 million for the Red Line subway extension to North Hollywood.

* $165 million to help AIDS patients buy expensive drug therapies.

* Doubling over five years the budget for the National Institutes of Health, which currently supplies more than half of all federal funds received by the University of California.

* $143 million to restore the San Francisco Bay Delta.

* $20 million in restitution to about 200 Vietnamese who were commandos during the war and were lost in prison camps for years before coming to the United States.