The Modesto Bee from Modesto, California • 65

SAN JOAQUIN The Modesto Bee WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 28 1981 Reagan comes up $1 billion short on first appropriations test deficit or on the campaign to bring down interest rates by cutting federal spending Sen Bennett Johnston D-La got closer to the political heart of the matter pointing out various back-home projects including several in Georgia that might be jeopardized by amendment The House previously approved an Interior Department appropriations bill that differs in the aggregate only in that it counts $34 billion for the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as part of the budget while the Senate version does not do so The bills differ substantially in detail however necessitating a House-Senate conference before the legislation can be sent to the White House Action on the Interior bill came as the Appropriations Committee approved $104 billion for the Department of Transportation also exceeding September goal by $637 million liam Proxmire D-Wis to cut $135 million in projected spending for synthetic fuels development Amendments to increase spending for weatheriza-tion and other programs were turned aside as well and by a vote of 48-43 the Senate refused to increase spending by $13 million as proposed by Sen Patrick Leahy D-Vt to beef up investigation of an estimated $86 billion in oil price-control violations by oil companies Even proposal amounting to a 5 percent cut on top of what the Senate had already voted fell substantially short of request last month that spending be cut 12 percent across the board below his own March budget proposals McClure opposed amendment noting that the Appropriations Committee had not been able to agree on further cuts and asserting that proposed cuts would have no on the impending second round of budget proposals met with quick opposition even among Republicans when he announced them last month Republicans since have been groping unsuccessfully for some way to deal with them They finally decided just to forge ahead with the waiting appropriations bills was the first out of the box Reagan has vowed to veto bills that the but White House officials declined Tuesday to say whether the Interior bill fits that description The Senate approved cuts totaling about $160 million proposed by Sen James A McClure R-Idaho chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on Interior but voting 61-35 rejected a proposal by Sen Mack Mattingly R-Ga to cut about $380 million more It also rejected 57-40 a proposal by Sen Wil- By HELEN DEWAR The Washington Post WASHINGTON President Reagan came up $1 billion short Tuesday in the first test of his new budget-cutting proposals in the Republican Senate In approving 87-8 a $76 billion appropriations bill for the Interior Department and related agencies this year the Senate refused to make more than minor cuts it would have had to cut $1 billion to stay within the new spending limits Reagan proposed last month Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete Domenici R-NM said the bill roughly approximates total spending goals proposed by Reagan last March before spiraling deficit projections prompted the president to seek further spending cuts this fall State disability insurance hike will take more from paycheck payments will be increased to a maximum of $136 in the cpming year for persons who earn $17-000 or more Thus instead of stopping when a earnings reach $14900 SDI deductions will continue until $17000 The minimum benefit of $30 a week will rise to $50 a week for a person who qualifies by earning at least $75 a quarter Persons who paid the maximum this year saw between $3 and $350 withheld from pay-checks each week until they had contributed the maximum EDD Director Patino with advice from his executive staff approved the increased benefits and contributions A law signed by Gov Brown two years ago authorized the department to make the adjustments needed to keep the disability insurance fund in balance on virtually the same terms already used to adjust unemployment benefits and contributions paycheck for those entitled to the maximum benefit comes on top of a large hike in federal Social Security contributions that also will be deducted from paychecks beginning Jan 1 The employee-paid SDI program covers loss of work because of pregnancy or illnesses and injuries not related to the job It is not related to compensation which covers job-related disabilities or employer-paid unemployment insurance The benefits paid (for a maximum of 39 weeks) and the amount contributed by an employee is figured on a sliding scale based on total wages The maximum benefit will rise from $154 a week this year to $175 a week next year a 13 percent increase But the amount paid in by employees will jump 52 percent or $4660 Persons earning $14900 or more this year paid $8940 into the fund In contrast employee By JEFF RAIMUNDO Bee Capitol Bureau SACRAMENTO One of the little-publicized changes confronting 85 million California wage earners beginning Jan 1 will be a 52 percent increase in the amount withheld from their paychecks for state disability insurance The increase will help cover only a 13 percent increase in benefits and comes only two years after the state gave back millions of dollars in excess disability collections to California taxpayers Employment Development Department Director Douglas Patino says the great disparity between increased benefits and contributions results from annual readjustments needed to keep the SDI fund in balance following year we might be able to get it down he said Tuesday The increase which would range around $1 per weekly AP photo Making a buck At long last the government has found a sheet of 16 suitable for framing or wallway to make a dollar worth more than it papering will run you $2025 At that used to be And the customers are lining rate the Bureau of Engraving and Printing up to pay a hefty premium for an uncut is making roughly a quarter for making a version now rolling off the presses A rough buck Inez Stevens shows samples Zoo CONTINUEDfrom A-l -it to officials A lion can eatqn 8-pound hunk of horsemeat a day for instance Zoo Director Ken Nieland said he is happy about losing accreditation because it points out improvements the zoo has needed for years will help not hinder If we had been accredited it Would have raised doubts about the whole accreditation Nieland said The zoological association in canceling accreditation also questioned whether a zoo in the San Joaquin Valley where the temperature hits 110 on a summer day should have a polar bear County Parks and Recreation Director Gene Andal disputes that the valley heat is bad for Maggie and he thinks the zoo should keep her is the healthiest polar bear I ever said Andal year from a trust fund left by the late William Micke a Lodi tokay grape grower who donated the land for Micke Grove Park in the 1930s Micke started the zoo on about three acres in the park Even without an admission charge income does not meet all costs and the county provides the rest according to County Administrator Dixon County officials predict they also will seek contributions from the public for the improvement project The zoo already seeks public aid for operating costs with appeals such as its adopt-an-animal program to which individuals or groups are asked to give the money needed to feed and care for one animal for a year With inflation the cost of feeding the 280 animals is running to $36000 a year according creasesin the CPI If the change took effect in 1980 the CPI would have shown an inflation rate of 108 percent for the year down from the reported rate of 124 percent Similarly inflation during the 12 months through September of this year would have been 92 percent instead of 11 percent AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland denounced the Reagan administration for "tampering with the Consumer Price the anti-inflation program is clearly not working the administration is seeking a new solution change the method of computing the Kirkland said Rep Claude Pepper D-Fla chairman of the House Select Committee on Aging charged that finagling with the formula will only undermine confidence in the Social Security system and in the US In California labor leaders and spokesmen for the elderly were generally unhappy Tuesday with the new cost-of-living ruies solve problems by changing the rules in the middle of the said an official of the 27-million-member Los Angeles County Federation of Labor who requested that his name not be used still change our basic problems of high interest misguided economic policies and high worldwide fuel animals A proposal that could raise some of the money was made Tuesday San Joaquin County Zoological Society president John Bre-desen and Robert Friedberger a parks commissioner asked the Board of Supervisors to institute a $1 admission fee for adults on weekends and holidays starting Jan 1 Admission has been free since the zoo opened The supervisors delayed action for a week on the admission proposal which would raise an estimated $50000 a year Bredesen and Friedberger argued Tuesday that the admission income plus about $130000 a year in other revenue should be placed in the long-range park improvement program The county receives about $100000 a Index CONTINUEDfrom A 1 Americans whose incomes are affected directly by the index About 9 million union members are covered by labor contracts that provide cost-of-living wage increases based on the CPI and an additional 81 million people receive Social Security government pensions food stamps and other federal benefits that increase based on rises in the CPI Janet Norwood commissioner of the statistics bureau said the agency will replace the current measure of home ownership with a new formula that will no longer measure house prices or mortgage costs directly Instead the new method will estimate how much it would cost an owner to rent his or her dwelling The change would go into effect starting January 1983 for the broadest inflation measure the CPI for All Urban Consumers However a companion index used to determine cost-of-living increases in Social Security other government benefit programs and most labor contracts will not be changed until January 1985 That index is called the CPI for Wage Earners and Clerical Workers Norwood said the longer delay in changing the second index would benefit unions that recently signed three-year contracts containing cost-of-living clauses that raise wages based on in- AWACS Holistic morning report pists to psychologists An honor graduate of Yale who also was graduated from the Yale Medical School Lethin said he became interested in the mind-body-spirit aspect of medicine almost a decade ago His specialty of pediatrics Lethin said made it easier for him to accept the holistic health concepts because treating children often involves treating more than just the body He also is a part-time professor at the University of California San Francisco Medical School CONTINUEDfrom Page A-l allow holistic health practitioners to practice specific kinds of medicine should be carefully monitored Lethin said who takes a few seminars thinks of himself as a holistic health practitioner and that has caused some harm The state should make certain that anyone who is licensed has enough training he said Lethin sees a physician as the captain of a holistic health coordinating practitioners ranging from dance thera- CONTINUEDfrom A-I wlf scheduled to bethe first person executed in the nation by lethal drug injection The 10th US Circuit Court of Appeals Monday ordered an indefinite stay of execution for Thomas Lee Hays of Muskogee Okla Hays 45 who has refused to contest the death penalty Presley doctor defended MEMPHIS Tenn Elvis Presley received addictive drugs from sources other than his doctor who attempted to replace the drugs with harmless placebos a jury was told Tuesday The defense in the trial of Dr George Nichopoulos doctor for 11 years presented an array of witnesses in an attempt to picture Nichopoulos as a caring physician who tried to control craving for pills Nichopoulos 53 is charged with 11 felony counts of overprescribing drugs to Presley singer Jerry Lee Lewis and seven other patients Six months added to term SAN FRANCISCO A former Oakland policeman serving a five-year prison term for obstructing justice was sentenced to an additional six months in prison Tuesday for lying to a federal grand jury US District Judge William Schwarzer sentenced Wayne Brown 29 to a second five-year prison sentence but suspended all but six months Brown will be on probation for the 4V4-year period not served in jail U'S Young elected Atlanta mayor ATLANTA Former UN Ambassador Andrew Young was elected mayor Tuesday in a hotly contested runoff election to determine whether blacks would keep political control in the financial capital of the Southeast Young scoring heavily in the predominantly black precincts beat state Rep Sidney Marcus by more than 12000 votes With all of the vote counted the unofficial results showed Young with 65798 or 552 percent while Marcus had 53549 or 448 percent Young 49 succeeds Maynard Jackson who was elected in 1973 as the first black mayor Pentagon denies space weapon WASHINGTON The Pentagon on Tuesday denied a published report that Russia is operating an improved space weapon capable of destroying multiple US satellites The story in the Oct 26 edition of Aviation Week which cited no sources said the Union is operating in low earth orbit an anti-satellite battle station equipped with clusters of infrared-homing guided interceptors thatcould destroy multiple US Some of this most important spy satellites operate in relatively low orbits But satellites watching for Soviet missile launchings are in position more than 22000 miles in space and are currently considered invulnerable to any Soviet counter-action Cruise missile hits target POINT MUGU A Tomahawk cruise missile launched by the Navy from a submerged submarine successfully zigzagged its way over hundreds of miles of land and water Tuesday to hit its target the government said The missile was launched from the USS Guitarro near San Clemente and ended its mission at the Tonopah Test Range outside of Las Vegas Nev Watt trying to be steward' MINNEAPOLIS Interior Secretary James Watt saying he has no intention of resigning told park and recreation professionals Tuesday that members of the Reagan administration are to be good Watt also said in a speech to the annual congress of the National Recreation and Park Association that the future of parks is tied to the ability to get inflation under control and create a healthy private sector we restore our economic vitality we will not have the means to restore our parks and recreation he said Mother wins stay for son DENVER A 71-year-old widowed mother succeeded at least temporarily in her efforts to halt the execution of her murderer son The uncommitteds who came into corner were David Boren D-Okla Robert Dole R-Kan James Exon D-Neb Pete Domenici R-NM Walter Huddleston D-Ky John Melcher D-Mont Frank Murkowski R-Alaska Harrison Schmitt R-NM and Charles Grassley R-Iowa Dole Domenici and Schmitt had been expected to back the president However the opponents had been hopeful of winning some of the others particularly Exon and Boren as a cushion against anticipated defections from the list of those who had declared their intention to vote against the sale The opposition had expected that the intense pressures being exerted by the White House would pry away some freshman Republicans like Gorton and Andrews tional sophisticated aircraft equipment The House voted 311-111 against the sale on Oct 14 if the Senate follows its lead it will be the first time that Congress has exercised its prerogative to veto a major arms deal The administration aided by Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker Jr R-Tenn has waged an all-out lobbying blitz to reverse the majority originally leaning against the sale on the grounds that the equipment might be used against Israel or fall into the hands of forces hostile to the United States The determined chipping away finally began to show results Tuesday as Jepsen switched sides publicly Gorton and Andrews reportedly gave the White House their assurances they would follow suit and nine previously uncommitted senators announced their support of the sale the stated intentions of various senators will show 52 opposed to the sale 47 supporting the president and one Long undecided However it now is widely thought in the Senate that Gorton and Andrews both co- sponsors of the disapproval resolution will change sides when the roll is called That would make the vote against Reagan 50-49 It then would be up to Long to determine whether the final tally is 50-50 which would defeat the disapproval resolution or 51-49 which would give the opposition the edge they need to defeat the sale At issqe is the largest proposed arms deal in history one involving the sale to the Saudis of five Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) radar surveillance planes and addi-.