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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
U.S. to send aid to Russia
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Strapped for cash, the Clinton administration is preparing a modest aid package for Boris Yeltsin that will send several hundred U.S. helpers rather than huge amounts of money to Russia, officials said yesterday.
The helpers are to help modernize farms and factories, create an effective transportation system and remake state industries into private businesses.
"Most of this aid is not money that's going to go from the Treasury to the Central Bank in Moscow," one official said.
Rather, money will go to people from the U.S. food industry, retired U.S. farmers and retired U.S. business executives who would work in Russia for six months to two years, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The expected U.S. package, totaling about $1 billion, draws heavily on money inherited from the Bush administration but not yet spent.
The administration official stressed that the aid was separate from $717 million that Clinton has requested for Russia and other former Soviet republics for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1.
Clinton will announce the new aid package Sunday at a joint news conference with Yeltsin at the end of a two-day summit in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The White House hopes their meeting will give a political boost to Yeltsin, who narrowly survived
efforts to impeach him and has called an April 25 referendum to decide whether he or the Russian parliament has ultimate authority.
Apart from steps to spur private enterprises, the administration has been considering loan guarantees for housing for Russian soldiers returning from Eastern Europe, food aid, and assistance to rebuild oil and gas facilities.
In a warp for the summit, Clinton will deliver a speech in Annapolis, Md., today before the American Society of Newsaper Editors to spell out why he believes helping Russia is in the security and economic interests of the United States.
"He (Clinton) knows that this is an important moment for Russia and the United States and the rest of the world as we move forward to help the Russians in the reform process," White House communications director George Stephanopoulos said.
Approval of budget expected
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — House Democrats were ready yesterday to pass a deficit-reduction plan paving the way for President Clinton's vision of tax increases on the rich, defense cuts and spending bonuses for education and other programs.
The vote was expected to be the first in a furry that could put the foundation of Clinton's economic plan in place by week's end. Also on tap for possible completion was the president's $16.3 billion job measure, which the Senate was debating.
With senators ready to give their own final approval to the five-year, $496 billion budget-cutting blueprint as early as today, Democrats were poised to hand their new president a gift: the earliest approval of a federal budget ever.
But its flavor would be dramatically different. Its policies would thoroughly reverse the big defense buildup, tax cuts and domestic spending slashes that President Reagan brought to Washington twelve years ago.
The measure lays the groundwork for savings that would about equal the budget summit agreement of 1990 during the Bush administration, the largest deficit-reduction measure ever enacted.
The measure outlines plans for the government to spend $1.5 trillion in fiscal 2014, which starts Oct. 1, leaving a deficit of about $250 billion.
House-Senate bargainers quickly sculpted a compromise deficit-reduction outline Tuesday, starting from separate packages that were remarkably similar. The Senate had sought steeper tax increases, while the House wanted slightly deeper defense cuts.
The heart of the final version is a plan to raise taxes during the next five years by $273 billion, one of the biggest tax increases ever. Most of the new revenue would come from the rich, but higher levies would also be paid by corporations, energy users and higher-income Social Security recipients.
An additional $117 billion in savings would come from reductions in domestic spending — by shrinking the government's bureaucracy and trimming Medicare payments to doctors — and the resulting decrease in federal interest payments.
If all such savings occur, federal deficits expected to soar to record levels in excess of $300 billion later this decade would be held to $192 billion in fiscal 1997, but bump upward again to $202 billion the next year.
The measure shifts some of the money to domestic programs that Clinton believes should be fattened to help the economy gain long-term vigor. Among the beneficiaries would be Head Start for preschool children, summer jobs for youths, and job-retraining.
As for the jobs bill the Senate debated, Clinton professed a lack of concern about Republican threats to delay it with a filibuster. The GOP, with 43 of the Senate's 100 members, needs only 41 votes to hold up a vote with prolonged debate.
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