Reagan Appeals To Congress to Cut 'Wasteful' Projects
WASHINGTON -- President Reagan issued a list of 107 examples of "wasteful" spending approved by Congress last December, but backed away from his earlier vow to formally ask Congress to strike them from the fiscal 1988 budget.</br></br>Instead, Mr. Reagan said he was "informally asking that the Congress review these projects" and "rescind them as soon as possible." Congress isn't expected to do so.</br></br>The president said the budget deficit for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 would shrink by $336.1 million if Congress would, among other things, drop a $6.4 million project to build a gondola system for tourists in Idaho; a $2.6 million fishery-promotion council; and $5 million toward construction of a dam in Oklahoma City.</br></br>Mr. Reagan also asked that Congress withdraw its ban on the sale of $801 million of government loans to private investors. If Congress adopted all of Mr. Reagan's requests, the federal budget deficit would shrink by $1.14 billion, or less than 1%.</br></br>The list was released yesterday by James Miller, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who had just returned from a five-day trip to Europe to study "privatization." Mr. Miller denied that the trip was an example of wasteful White House spending. "It was extraordinarily well . . . deserved," he joked, and called it a "useful expenditure of money."