As President Clinton signaled he may accept up to $90 billion in spending cuts beyond his original proposals, Rep. Karen Shepherd, D-Utah, says she's found $20 billion worth of new specific "pure pork" cuts to help achieve it.
In the spirit of sacrifice, she's even suggested a couple that could hurt Utah - including killing development of the C-17 airplane, which is important to McDonnell Douglas, and deeper cuts in electrical development subsidies to rural areas.But the one cut she wants most could also save thousands of jobs in the state: canceling a $1.65 billion plant in Mississippi (in the district of the former House Ap-pro-priations Committee chairman, who pulled strings for it) to build space shuttle boosters to replace those now made by Thiokol in Utah.
Shepherd said the Mississippi Advanced Solid Rocket Motor program "is real pork - so much so that it oinks." She said it isn't needed for NASA programs, "and is being developed more because of its geographical location than its need."
She added that if Congress continues that program because of political pressure, "we should be shot at morning."
About the cuts that could hurt Utah, she said killing the C-17 - a project pushed by McDonnell Doug-las, which has a plant in Utah - "is one of the few ways we can achieve the large defense cuts proposed. We have to get to the point where a few programs march off the plank."
She also proposes $110 million in cuts deeper than Clinton has proposed in Rural Electrification Agency grants. "Although $91 million in REA loans were distributed in Utah in 1991, I feel that this program has outlived its usefulness."
Shepherd said most proposed cuts so far have been merely "mathematical exercises," because they have only provided target levels for funding without identifying many specific cuts to be made.
"The devil is in the details, and so far, details have been severely lacking," she said. "This is my 2 cents' worth about what I think should be done, and I have presented this information to the Budget Committee."
Among other cuts Shepherd proposes is totally killing the Superconducting Supercollider, saving an additional $2.19 billion. "I support basic research, but that is too much money for too long of a shot at this time in our history," she said.
She also proposes eliminating congressional cost-of-living increases, saving $150 million; eliminating overseas U.S. broadcasting, saving an extra $1.51 billion; and saving $10 billion in deeper defense cuts, including withdrawing troops from Korea, limiting Strategic Defense Initiate work, privatizing commissaries and cutting in-tel-ligence operations by 20 per-cent.
Other proposals include cutting wool/mohair/honey subsidies by an extra $510 million; eliminating the Market Promotion Program, saving an extra $640 million; and saving $1.65 billion by using Internal Revenue Service income data to find unreported income of households receiving rent subsidies.