1985-04-09 - Laserfiche WebLink

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I I I Council r~i nutes April 9, 1985 Page Seven Announcements & Updates, continued Benke stated that during discussions around the budget and throughout the entire conference he was frustrated and downhearted in looking at not only the message but the way the people talked about that message and the perception of the people in Washington; maybe it's not fair to characterize it that way because I don't live there and I deal with those problems every day and I only had a three day shot at that environment, but they just didn't seem to be addressing the problem. For example, with our meeting with the Congressional Delegation most made, and this was the day of the M-X vote, the comment that it doesn't really make any difference how we vote on this issue those expenditures won't be made until 1988 and we are worried now about the budget deficit in 1986. If they had made that decision two years ago we would not have such a bad problem today. The resources the cities, counties, and states use to foster and generate growth were in fact being removed precisely when we need them the most. National League of Cities Conf. The last part of the message I see there that is perhaps the most discouragin9 that even the most optimistic ~rojections were at the end of the decade we will probably still be dealing, at best, a 100 billion dollar deficit and even if their wildest dreams were met and we got the budget deficit down to zero, we would still be looking at a 3 trillion dollar national debt and a 3 hundred billion debt payment. It appears to us uneducated economists that we are going to be paying a lot of money in interest costs for many, many years unless something more radical is done to the budget. The bottom line to the cities is many of the federal funds we rely on (such as revenue sharing) are not going to be there probably beyond this year, maybe a little bit next year. Senator Novak stated essentially the same thing after Vento's Town Meeting and that is put in the discussions and the decisions being made in the State Legislature now. I feel more and more we are going to be left to defend for ourselves. The City Officials were fairly unaminous in their oplnlon that something had to be done with that deficit. It appeared that the Defense Budget was the place to look also. I think anything we can do to reinforce some of our Congressmen and Senators in that direction with the rest of the League Members we should try to do it. The one bit of news that is somewhat heartening is the superfund will be reinacted with our amendment, hopefully by September. The questions are: how much money is in that fund, and will the deficit impact the decision for eligibility for superfund funding. Those are things we should continue to monitor.