According to the BIA'S "impact statement," these key areas will be affected:

EDUCATION

Eliminated will be the preschool child program serving 42,265 children, tribal summer employment programs for 22,000 Indian teenagers, and the Sioux Junior College program. Reduced will be all special programs benefitting Indian students in public schools through programs of special reading, home coordination, counseling and the like, and aid for Navajo Community College.

Terminated will be contracts with the University of New Mexico Indian Law Program, and Masters Degree Programs with Dartmouth University, together with the Universities of Georgia, Arizona and North Dakota.

Four large and yet unspecified boarding schools and several small institutions will be closed, and no Alaska Native children will be sent away to school in Widwood, Alaska.

WELFARE AND GUIDANCE

All Tribal Work Experience Programs will be eliminated, and payments of general assistance and child welfare will be discontinued on next March 30.

HOUSING

Construction of 32 new homes and repairs on 234 homes will be cancelled, and staff layoffs will number 10. Five BIA housing offices will be closed, and contracting, training and management funds will be reduced.

EMPLOYMENT AND VOCATIONAL ASSISTANCE

Closure of eight national field offices, seven area field employment assistance offices, the Solo Parent Training Center in San Diego, Calif., the Madera, Calif., and Roswell Employment Training Centers, and reduction of the Bismark, N. D., Training Center by one-third.

LAW AND ORDER

Closure of Roswell, N.M., Indian Police Academy and staff reduction of 20 personnel.

WATER RESOURCE PROTECTION

The current budget figure, $1.7 million, will be retained for the Indian Water Rights Office rather than the publicly announced $2 million figure, about $200,000 will be trimmed from funds for operating and maintaining irrigation systems on reservations, and $2 million will be eliminated from a budget for new waterways construction.

Cutbacks amounting to $1.6 million are also slated for resource management programs in the areas of agricultural extension, credit, reservation programs, industrial development, real property management and appraisal, general trustee services and environmental quality services.

The BIA was already at work on the $50 million budget slash, it was learned from the confidential "impact statement" memoranda, when Interior Secretary Rogers C. B. Morton addressed the National Tribal Chairmen's Association (NTCA) in Eugene, Ore., on Aug. 7, during their annual convention. There Morton stated:

"Funding is the strongest indicator of commitment in government."

The Interior Department will doubtless be explaining this latest "indicator" to various Indian groups very soon.

[From the Wall Street Journal, Jan. 2, 1973]

BACK TO BATTLE-SOME FACES ARE NEW, BUT ISSUES ARE FAMILIAR AS CONGRESS RESUMES-CLASHES WITH NIXON ON WAR, POLLUTION, OTHER MATTERS SHAPE UP AS MAJOR FIGHTS-FROZEN FUNDS AND FROZEN PAY

(By Arlen Large and Norman Miller)

WASHINGTON.-The new Congress that convenes tomorrow will look different from the old one. There'll be an all-male Senate and a lot of fresh young faces in the House, including three black women.

But the new Congress is going to sound just like the old one, almost as if there had been no intervening reelection landslide by a Republican President. The same din that came from Capitol Hill in October promises to return undiminished in January, the same arguments with President Nixon resuming where they left off. Welfare, Foreign aid. Busing. Water pollution. Minimum wage. Consumers. And, everlastingly, the Vietnam war.

For a time after the November elections, it looked as if the President might start his second term with something of a congressional honeymoon. Democrats, having demonstrated their party's survivability both in Congress and the state capitals, seemed willing to write off their disastrous presidential campaign as a one-time bad trip. Even after Vietnam peace negotiations broke down in midDecember, Sen. Edward Kennedy made another of his intriguing "olive branch" speeches, promising "a new grace and a better spirit of cooperation" in postwar congressional dealings with the executive branch.

As recently as last weekend, House Speaker Carl Albert was trying to revive the honeymoon atmosphere that had been blown away by criticism of the twoweek U.S. aerial attack on North Vietnamese cities. The bombing halt, said Mr. Albert, will "set aside a very emotional and divisive problem, while we have so many other things to do."

LEGACY OF BAD FEELING

Resumption of peace negotiations will indeed cool, for a while, last week's fast-building demands for legislation cutting off money for Vietnam combat. There was little chance Congress could organize itself to act during January anyway. But the bombing has left a legacy of bad feeling that guarantees a sour start for the new session. House Democrats will vote in caucus today on an antiwar resolution (having no legal effect), and recriminations have started already over initial refusal of administration officials to explain their Vietnam policy before congressional committees this week.

The combative mood runs deeper than huffing over who testifies and when. Congress left town last October smarting about what it regarded as presidential affronts to its authority. Mr. Nixon's unilateral military moves in December have touched off loud new demands for Congress to reassert itself on issues ranging from war powers to control of the domestic purse. These challenges "are going to happen very quickly," predicts a moderate Republican Senator. "The war is the catalyst."

A Vietnam peace settlement would, of course, avert the constitutional crunch of denying combat money to the executive. But there appears to be no escaping a direct conflict over presidential refusal to spend money that Congress votes for specific purposes.

Mr. Nixon essentially won the first round in 1971, setting at times on as much as $12 billion while Congress fumed. But the new administration drive to hold current year outlays to $250 billion will bring even bigger impoundings.

Becoming symbolic of the controversy is the administration's refusal to allocate to the states $6 billion of a two-year $11 billion sum Congress earmarked for water-pollution treatment facilities. New York City is suing, and Sen. Edmund Muskie says Congress may join in. (Congressional lawsuits may become the latest fad in legislative vs. executive conflict; Sen. Kennedy already is suing against what he considers an improper presidential pocket veto of a medical training bill.)

THINKING OF NEXT ELECTION

So a legislative counterattack is in the making, and the President's men see it coming. "We anticipate face-offs with the Democrats on several budget issues shortly after they get back," says a White House aide. Next month North Carolina's Democratic Sen. Sam Ervin plans to take anguished testimony from municipal sewage-treatment officials and other impoundment victims, and then push his bill that would release impounded money if Congress doesn't affirmatively approve each presidential decision to withhold it.

Sen. Ervin pitches his argument on the high constitutional ground of retaining congressional control of the purse, but some Republicans as well as Democrats will join such revolts for less noble reasons. One influential GOP House member, who predicts Republicans will become less united behind Mr. Nixon, observes: "Let's face it, he doesn't have to run again, so he doesn't have to worry about the political effect of budget cuts. But we're still a bunch of politicians thinking of the next election."

90-538-73-69

Despite all the yelling about presidentially frozen funds, Mr. Nixon's battle against multi-billion-dollar budget deficits has forced Congress to think anew about its own money-handling methods. Few defend the current annual dice game of approving a random collection of spending proposals without relating them to overall budget goals or revenue prospects.

Reform plans being worked up by Rep. Al Ullman (D., Ore.) and Senators Adlai Stevenson (D., Ill.) and Charles Mathias (R. Md.) start with the idea of a congressional-established spending ceiling that may or may not coincide with the President's estimate. But there's no agreement on how to keep the piecemeal appropriations bills from piercing this ceiling. A special committee of senior Representatives and Senators is supposed to come up with an answer by the end of February, but there's little optimism a consensus can be reached. GOP Rep. John Rhodes of Arizona, a committee member, expects a lot of "Mickey Mouse" in this year's appropriations. Others expect a lot of vetoes.

Work will start next month on extension of wage-price controls beyond their April 30 expiration date. Democrats are talking boldly about cutting down the President's control options, perhaps by fixing a mandatory lid on interest rates (it's only standby now). But if the administration can strike some kind of bargain with organized labor before sending a new wage-price plan to Congress, there may be little for the Democrats to fight about.

The same goes, incidentally, for two other legislative issues around which Mr. Nixon may construct a new relationship with labor: a higher minimum wage, which failed last year because of an impasse over a subminimum for teen-agers; and a new set of relaxed foreign trade rules that threaten to be transformed into a union-inspired protectionist package. Without an administration-labor deal, both will bring on bloody battle.

In his first term, Mr. Nixon showed a preference for acting in areas where he needed little cooperation from Congress. This year his legislative shopping list again promises to be short, and the President may do rather well. He again wants a statutory curb on busing in school-desegregation plans. Senate liberals have been retreating grudgingly on such a law, and may be forced to accept one to head off a constitutional amendment.

The old Congress paid almost no attention to the President's plan for lumping narrow categories of federal grants into broad-purpose "special revenue sharing" distributions to states and cities. The idea still isn't very popular in Congress, but two existing programs coming up for renewal this year could acquire at least a token special-revenue-sharing label. One is the Justice Department's disbursement of training and equipment funds to law-enforcement authorities; the other is a collection of grants to high schools and grade schools.

The sweeping guaranteed income concepts of Mr. Nixon's original welfare-reform bill are probably dead for a long time, but the Senate Finance Committee is ready to start early work on some more modest plan if the administration is willing to bargain.

Further, there are signs that the administration will make at least a partial breakthrough in getting mass-transit funds from the highway trust fund. Unless real opposition crystalizes, both houses may authorize a planned 10-year conversion to metric measurement. And if anything is certain in legislative forecasting, the lawmakers will fall all over each other supporting the President's recent suggestion that they pass a law allowing soldout pro football games to be televised in the home team's area.

It's legislation that the administration didn't particularly want that generated much of the noise in the old Congress and that will do so in the new one. Sponsors of no-fault auto insurance, a consumer protection agency and strengthened powers for the Federal Trade Commission all plan to revive their projects, stymied in 1972. The House Ways and Means Committee plans to get cracking on a set of tax revisions for which the administration shows little enthusiasm. Liberals want to sweeten Mr. Nixon's health insurance plan, but a real decision probably won't come until 1974, if then.

In most of these issues, including busing and the war, Democrats in Congress find themselves sorely divided. But precisely because of these seemingly hopeless divisions, some think they'll soon be searching for ways to emphasize their opposition to the President. Says GOP Rep. Barber Conable of New York: "Richard Nixon has the same effect on Democrats as Israel has on the Arabs-he is the one thing that unifies them."

[From the Evening Star and Daily News, Washington, D.C., Oct. 16, 1972]

CAN DEFICITS BE CONGRESS-PROOF?

(By David Lawrence)

Congress has rarely placed itself under a spending limit, but it has been considering a ceiling of $250 billion of federal expenditures for the current fiscal year that ends June 30, 1973.

This means that, once the measure is approved by both houses of Congress, the President would be given the power to cut back certain programs for which money already has been appropriated if they exceed the limit imposed.

Under a federal budget, of course, there is some flexibility, and the President can refuse to utilize funds in excess of what he deems necessary. Generally speaking, if additional expenditures are authorized, the chief executive should be able to offset these by reductions in other directions. President Nixon said a few days ago in one of his speeches :

"I shall fight every attempt by the congress to boost that budget, because a big spending spree by the Congress will have only one result, a hangover of higher taxes or higher prices for every working family in America. No goal and no program has any higher priority with me than protecting our people's growing purchasing power, and when taxes or prices go up, purchasing power goes down." The President feels that the spending ceiling would “clearly be a vote against higher taxes." He said that his goal was not only "no tax increase in 1973, but no tax increase in the next four years." In order to achieve this, the President declared, there must be a "tax-proof ceiling on spending now." he added:

"Another reason this spending ceiling is needed is to enable us to fulfill our firm commitment to provide relief from property taxes. When property tax relief comes, and it will come if the Congress cooperates with me now on harnessing runaway spending, the first to receive relief will be those who most need it."

Nixon pointed out that there are more than a million retired Americans over 65 who live in their own homes with an income less than $2,000 a year, out of which they pay $300 to $700 in property taxes. He then commented as follows: "To allow that to happen to Americans who have worked all their lives to build this great country and to earn their retirement is a national disgrace. Relief for those Amerians is going to be a first order of business in our next federal budget.

"It has been charged by some prominent economists that a tax increase in 1973 is unavoidable. I disagree. There is nothing desirable and nothing inevitable about a tax increase in 1973 or beyond. But while a president can promise there will be no tax increase, as I have, he can keep that promise only if the Congress cooperates with him in holding down spending."

The big problem is that Congress often does not resist the pressures that are exerted on the members of both houses to spend money for projects in their districts or states.

The President spoke of predictions that Congress will vote billions of dollars more than his January budget requests. He said that the programs being considered are, almost without exception, for good purposes, but that, when they are all put together, "They add up to an inflationary catastrophe or a higher tax nightmare, and I do not intend to let this happen."

While there are many in both parties in Congress who agree with the President's views, there are political difficulties in accepting them. The demands for more and more appropriations continue every year, and members of Congress find it hard not to support various proposals.

The President, however, is insisting that the over-all situation must be kept in mind and that a limit on federal spending is imperative. Otherwise, deficits will increase, inflation will not be curbed, and the finances of the national government will not be strengthened. Nixon believes this can be averted by a debt ceiling. Along with what amounts to an item veto over ceratin spending authorizations.

[From the Long Island Press, Feb. 7, 1973]

CONGRESS VS. THE PRESIDENT

(Editorial)

To most people, the word impound means putting something, like an illegally parked car or a stray dog, into custody.

Now it has a more significant connotation-taking public money out of circulation. This definition could trigger the most serious constitutional crisis in many years. At stake is the basic issue-who is to decide, Congress or the President, or both, how our tax money is spent?

The Constitution gives Congress the power to raise and decide where to spend funds. But the executive department actually doles out the money, and there's the conflict.

President Nixon says he has an "absolutely clear" constitutional right to impound appropriations "when the spending of money would mean either increasing prices or increasing taxes for all the people."

Congress insists it alone has the authority to determine how much of the people's money will be spent and for what purposes. Sen. Sam Ervin, Congress' leading constitutional authority, has challenged Mr. Nixon "to show me a syllable in the Constitution that gives him the power to impound funds."

At the moment, President has the upper hand. By White House count, he is withholding $8.7 billion appropriated by Congress during the fiscal year. That doesn't include $6 billion in water cleanup funds approved over Mr. Nixon's veto last year.

Both sides believe their case has popular appeal, and both are partly right. Mr. Nixon contends his landslide election victory included a mandate not to increase taxes. He says impounding is the only way if Congress continues what he considers spending thrift policies.

The Democratic-controlled Congress also feels it won a mandate from the voters, who returned most Democrats to office while rejecting party standardbearer Sen. George McGovern. Congress insists its mandate includes a continuation of such social programs as aid to the poor, to education and to fight pollution.

Mr. Nixon contends fiscal responsibility is at issue, but Congress appears just as concerned as Mr. Nixon about keeping taxes in line and federal expenditures down. But there is disagreement about priorities, and with good cause.

Why, for example, with peace in Vietnam, should the budget include more for the military and less for social progress? And why, should we impound funds to clean the waters, but spend billions for space and highways?

Whether Mr. Nixon or Congress is reading the public pulse more accurately, the bigger question remains the President's power to impound vs. the Congress' constitutionaly-ordained power to "provide for .. the general welfare."

Refusal to spend appropriated money-after his veto was overridden by Congress-seems to give Mr. Nixon a second veto, one which Congress cannot override, at least not yet. His insistence that impounding is legal if it is for the good of the country also appears to put much power in the executive.

The government was set up with checks and balances the three branches of government, but they seem clearly out of kilter. It will probably remain for the third branch, the judiciary, to resolve the conflict between the other two. We hope it happens soon.

[From the Washington Post, Feb. 6, 1973]

SENATE DEFIES PRESIDENT FOR OMB VOICE

(By Spencer Rich and Richard L. Lyons)

In a double-barreled challenge to President Nixon on the spending issue, the Senate voted 64 to 17 yesterday to require Senate confirmation of Budget Director Roy Ash, and 65 to 15 to boost federal airport grants by $280 million over the next two years.

The White House strongly opposes both bills, and had openly threatened a veto of the OMB measure. The airport bill was similar to one vetoed on economy grounds after Congress adjourned last year. Yesterday's votes were well in excess of the two-thirds that will be needed to override presidential vetoes if both bills also pass the House.