"But not on us!" the oysters cried,
Turning a little blue.
"After such kindness, that would be
A dismal thing to do!"
--Through the Looking-Glass
If the shrieks reverberating through Washington last week were considerably louder than the murmuring of some doomed oysters, that was because the victims are larger and more numerous and more sensitive to threats of pain. Congressional oratory turned to images of mayhem. "Today's cuts are like trimming your nails," said New York Democratic Congressman Charles Schumer. "What is coming will be like chopping off your hand." Pennsylvania Democrat William Gray, chairman of the House Budget Committee, spoke even more gorily to the New York Times of "the amputation of both arms in 1987," and Senator Gary Hart of Colorado predicted, "We will cut off our nose to spite the deficit."
What they and the rest of official Washington were talking about was a novelty called Gramm-Rudman.* Passed by a harried Congress and signed by an equally harried President Reagan during the confusions of the pre-Christmas season, Gramm-Rudman decreed an end to the budget deficits that have become a Washington way of life over the past two decades. Right now. Congress knows that the deficit must be cut, but naturally dreads deciding on its own whose funds should be cut. So the legislators left it to U.S. Comptroller General Charles Bowsher to trim $11.7 billion from this year's budget. Then beginning with the fiscal-1987 budget that Reagan must submit next week, the restrictions become automatic. Discretion, choice, judgment--all are subordinated to the rule imposed by Gramm-Rudman that the deficit must be reduced in $36 billion increments each year until 1991, when the lion will lie down with the lamb and the deficit will total zero. The new law even dictates that half of the current cuts are to come from military spending (to be trimmed 4.9%) and half from nonmilitary outlays (4.3%). But not from us, the oysters began protesting.
Not us, cried the retired military veterans and civil servants, who expected to get a 3% cost of living increase in their pensions Jan. 1 but did not. Not us, cried the farmer organizations, whose hard-pressed members expected $20 billion in subsidies this year and now see that harvest shriveling. Not us, cried the operators of the New York City subways, who have no hope of keeping fares at $1 if they lose their subsidy of $550 million. Not us, cried the Nicaraguan contras, who got only $27 million in "nonmilitary" aid last year and now want $100 million, with $60 million for real weapons. Not us, cried the Internal Revenue Service, which after all collects the money.
Yes, you, all of you, replied the budget cutters. In a 419-page