$45 BILLION ASKED FOR S&LS EARLIER ESTIMATE $13 BILLION LOWER

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 17, 1993                   TAG: 9303170159
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
$45 BILLION ASKED FOR S&LS EARLIER ESTIMATE $13 BILLION LOWER
Treasury Secretary Lloyd Bentsen asked Congress Tuesday for $45 billion to finish the savings and loan cleanup and asserted the nation would pay "a far greater price, and deservedly so" if lawmakers refused.
The request, if approved, would bring the total spent or promised on S&Ls since 1988 to more than $200 billion.
The size of the Clinton administration's request to the House Banking Committee was $13 billion higher than the estimate issued by the Bush administration in January, just before it left office.
Private analysts contended that Bentsen had inflated his request, but they said it was better to ask for too much rather than too little and have to ask for another politically painful vote.
"The most sensible thing to do is ask for enough money so that even if you're wrong, you don't have to go up there [to Capitol Hill] again," said Robert Litan of the Brookings Institution, a liberal policy-research organization.
Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa, told Bentsen that gaining approval even once for additional S&L money would be tough. Leach, who supports the funding, advised the administration to include the money in a larger appropriations bill.
The treasury secretary said lawmakers had little choice but to continue paying for the cleanup. The alternative, he said, was to allow failed institutions to remain open and run up even larger losses.
The cleanup agency, the Resolution Trust Corp., has been without spending authority since April and Bentsen said that has added $1.1 billion to the cost.
"I know . . . it is a tough vote," he said. "But I also know that this is a vote for depositors, for the safety of our financial institutions, and that if we fail to meet this obligation, we will pay a far greater price and deservedly so."
He praised Albert Casey, who resigned effective Monday as president of the RTC, but promised "dramatic improvements" in management now that Deputy Treasury Secretary Roger Altman is interim head of the agency.
Rep. Toby Roth, R-Wis., said Bentsen had forced Casey to resign and he asked why, noting that Casey had promised to finish the job for $25 billion.
Bentsen never replied directly, but he said he thought Casey had arrived at that figure largely by shifting the responsibility and some of the cost to another agency, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB