WHAT'S REALLY IN `EMERGENCY' STIMULUS BILL?

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

DATE: TUESDAY, March 23, 1993                   TAG: 9303230027
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium
WHAT'S REALLY IN `EMERGENCY' STIMULUS BILL?
To hear Republicans describe the $16.3 billion stimulus package rammed through the House last week, President Clinton's measure is filled with wasteful or low-priority items - from fish atlases to whitewater canoeing courses - that would do little more than add to the federal budget deficit.
Moreover, they say, many of the jobs the stimulus package would create are temporary and high-cost. When all the costs of the stimulus are figured in (including $3.2 billion on top of the $16.3 billion in spending), they say, the 219,000 jobs to be created would cost $90,000 each.
House Democrats counter that the "emergency supplemental" bill would pump billions quickly into a still-struggling economy, while creating jobs and making needed long-term investments. They dispute the $90,000-per-job estimate, saying not all aspects of the stimulus package, such as education grants and unemployment benefits, create jobs per se.
Here is a closer look at how the money would be spent and how many jobs the administration says it would create.
The largest items are for extended unemployment benefits for 1.9 million individuals ($4 billion); new community development block grants, which pay for local projects ($2.5 billion); summer jobs and educational programs ($2.2 billion); grant aid for poor college students ($1.9 billion); road building and other transit projects ($1 billion); grants for state wastewater treatment plants ($845 million); and immunization and AIDs programs ($500 million).
Overall, according to revisions from Office of Management and Budget Director Leon Panetta, the administration expects the stimulus package to create a little more than 219,000 full-time-equivalent jobs. When the administration sent the package to the House Appropriations Committee last month, it estimated that 328,000 full-time-equivalent jobs would be created. A full-time equivalent is economic jargon; four temporary three-month jobs, for example, represent one full-time-equivalent job, as do two half-time jobs.
Many of the proposed jobs are part time or temporary - the kind of employment Labor Secretary Robert B. Reich denigrated earlier this month. In commenting on the big February growth in private sector jobs, Reich complained that too many were part time or temporary.
Of the 219,000 full-time-equivalent jobs in the stimulus package, 144,000 are accounted for by summer jobs for 675,000 poor youths and Head Start teachers. The rest come from "infrastructure" spending - including not only highways and mass transit but Veterans Affairs maintenance projects - which would add 22,324 jobs; block grant spending, 15,894 jobs; and construction and road maintenance by the Forest Service and the Interior Department, 15,050 jobs.
A number of projects in the House-passed package let disenchanted GOP members cry "Pork!" or question their inclusion in an "emergency" funding measure.
A favorite GOP target is the National Park Service's $1.4 million for 28 projects to draw "significant structures and engineering achievements." Interior Department spokesman Kevin Sweeney said the money will go to fund 12-week jobs for architectural and engineering students. The students will make drawings of structures such as a Mark Twain house in Connecticut and old iron-clad ships for "deposit within the Library of Congress," according to the administration's plan sent to Congress.
The Republicans also questioned the emergency nature of spending $800,000 to prepare the white water canoeing course for the 1996 Olympics near Atlanta.
Without referring to any specific spending proposal, an OMB spokesman said, "If there are a couple of projects put in there [the stimulus package] by the departments that are not appropriate for a fiscal stimulus bill, they won't be there" when the final version of the bill passes.
In the floor debate on the bill last week, Republicans also attacked some possible projects to be funded by the $2.5 billion CBDG proposal, including a $5 million parking garage on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and $1 million municipal cemetery in Puerto Rico.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB