United States Budget

Tim Hanson had heard that the luxury tax placed on expensive boats could be lifted, but as he helped set up for the Southern California Boat Show at the Convention Center, the news was just sinking in. "Yee-haw!" crowed Hanson, service manager for Marine Center Inc., a Pomona power boat dealership. "The taxes on boats are discouraging a lot of people from buying them. If they drop the tax, I bet things will change."

Vice President Dick Cheney cast his first tie-breaking vote in the Senate on Tuesday, rescuing President Bush's budget plan from a Democratic effort to scale back the administration's $1.6-trillion tax cut proposal in order to increase funding for a new Medicare prescription drug benefit. Cheney cast his vote during debate on a budget resolution that includes the outlines of Bush's fiscal policy, including his tax cut plan.

The specter of budget deficits in the hundreds of billions of dollars, once a yearly nightmare, has become commonplace and perhaps even manageable. But now a new and equally frightening vision is looming: an ever-growing trade deficit, also in the hundreds of billions a year, that eventually traps the nation's economy in an escape-proof prison of debt, eventually to be measured in trillions of dollars owed to foreigners.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan on Thursday cautiously endorsed the kind of substantial tax cuts advocated by President Bush, saying federal budget surpluses have grown so large that the government must begin shrinking the amount of money it requires Americans to send to Washington.

In the time it takes to read this sentence, the national debt will have increased $20,000. The colossal growth in federal budget deficits is directly responsible for the ballooning of the national debt--now hovering around $4.9 trillion. Disagreements between Congress and the President over how to craft balanced budget proposals to control borrowing have sparked two government shutdowns and ignited a heated debate among economists on the merits of eliminating the deficit.

Thousands of bees are buzzing about the old warehouse that serves as their winter home, but Richard Adee and his workers pay no mind as they go about their business in shirt-sleeves. Walking outside with an air of confidence and no protective gear, Adee pierces a virtual wall of bees in the doorway as if they weren't there. "You get stung every once in a while, but you get used to them," he observes matter-of-factly.

NASA's controversial space station program developed potential cost overruns of more than $1 billion because of management failings by NASA and private contractors--including McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach, government officials said Tuesday. They also said continuing efforts to redesign the $31-billion project have contributed to potential cost overruns.

Hours after the 105th Congress adjourned, President Clinton on Thursday signed a law that encourages states to set up more high-quality charter schools. Clinton cited the legislation as a rare example of bipartisan cooperation in the GOP-controlled Congress. "That is the right way to strengthen our public schools," the president said in brief remarks on the South Lawn of the White House. Clinton blasted the Republicans for torpedoing his top legislative priorities.

With the budget deadlock unlocked, members of Congress are returning to their districts to explain what the fight in Washington was all about. In the case of Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego), the fight was a real one, albeit brief. Cunningham says he is unscathed and forgives his Democratic assailant, Rep. Jim Moran of Virginia. Late Friday, Moran pushed Cunningham from behind as they were leaving the House chambers and then took a swing at him, which Cunningham blocked.

The Bush Administration is readying a fiscal 1992 defense budget that would continue the cutback in military spending begun last year, despite the stepped-up war in the Persian Gulf and recent setbacks in the Soviet Union's move toward democratic reforms. The new spending plan, to be disclosed on Monday, is expected to propose cutting military outlays by a sharp 3.3% after inflation, reducing further the number of military personnel and canceling two key nuclear missile programs.