Page 4-Saturday, May 22, 1982-The Michigan Daily
Reagan to veto
'budget-busting'
spending bills
WASHINGTON (AP) - President
Reagan, vowing to stay on his current
economic course, has told his advisers
he is eager to veto "budget-busting"
spending bills Congress may pass to
counter the recession, sources said
yesterday.
"The impression I got was that the
president relishes the opportunity to
veto these bills," a private economist
and part-time Reagan adviser said of
stop-gap mortgage subsidy and job-
creation measures speeding through
Congress.
THE ADVISER, . who did not want
his name used, and others who met with
Reagan on Thursday described the
president as unequivocal in his deter-
mination to resist congressional moves
to fight the recession with short-term
spending plans that would add to an
already enormous budget deficit cer-
tian to top $100 billion in 1983.
A bill that would provide $1 billion a
year over the next five years to sub-
sidize new-home mortgage interest
rates by as much as four percentage
points is sailing through Congress. The
bill, meant to help revive the severely
depressed housing industry, passed the
House by a lopsided margin. Senate
backers predict swift passage in that
chamber, and the strong support raises
the possibility that Congress might
override aveto.
Democratic leaders in the House are
Reagan
... eager to veto
promoting a $1 billion job-creation bill
in response to a rise in the nation's
unemployment rate last month to a 41-
year high of 9.4 percent.
The final budget in the Senate
represents a compromise both for the
majority Republicans' leadership and
Reagan - and deficits far larger than
any approved in advance by either
house of Congress. The red ink totals
nearly $116 billion nest year; about $92
billion in 1984; and almost $65 billion in
1985.
In Brief
Compiled from Associated Press and
United Press International reports
Consumer prices rise slightly
WASHINGTON- Consumer prices, reversing the sharpest monthly drop
in 29 years, rose at a modest 3 percent annual rate in April, the government
said yesterday. Record declines in gasoline and fuel oil prices were largely
wiped out, however, by higher food and housing prices.
The White House said the news meant "lower inflation is continuing," and
a GOP congressman boasted that the "Republicans are beginning to make
things better."
Most private economists, however, attribute the modest inflation rate to
the persistence of recession and a worldwide oil surplus.
With April's small rise, consumer prices have gone up a mere 1.5 percent,
at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, during the first four months of this
year.
For the past 12 months, from last April to this April, they have climbed
only 6.6 percent, markedly under the 8.9 percent for all of 1981 and the 12.4
percent of 1980.
Fishermen find U.S. documents
DUBLIN, Ireland- Fishermen in the Irish Sea came up with a surprise
catch in their nets, confidential documents believed to be from a U.S.
nuclear submarine, officials said yesterday.
A spokesman for the Irish Fishermen's Organization said the fishermen
found 27 documents from the U.S.S. Henry Clay, including equipment lists
and docking procedures, in a metal canister tangled in their trawler's nets
about 25 miles off the Irish coast.
The spokesman said the discovery was made last Wednesday only a half
mile from where another fishing boat was accidentally sunk by a British
submarine that became entangled in its nets last month.
He said the Northern Irish skipper of the boat who found the canister gave
them to Patrick Connolly, skipper of another boat fishing nearby, who
turned them into naval officials yesterday.
GM president Smith claims
white collar layoffs are over
DETROIT- General Motors Corp. Chairman Roger Smith said yesterday
across-the-board white collar layoffs are over, and he hopes salaried em-
ployees angered over recent cutbacks will reject unionization.
Smith told shareholders at the annual meeting that GM also will have
recalled more than 24,000 hourly employees by June, largely due to im-
proved car sales during the past month.
The GM president said no agreement has been reached yet with the
Japanese automaker Toyota on the possibility of using one of GM's idle West
Coast plants to build cars.
Smtih said there will be more visits by GM's negotiating team to Japan.
"Some items have been resolved," he said, and predicted there will be a
decision by fall.
OPEC to keep price ceiling
QUITO, Ecuador- OPEC oil ministers decided yesterday to retain their
production ceiling "until further notice" and to leave prices unchanged, the
cartel's secretary general said.
"There is agreement on every issue," said Marc Nam Nguema. "The
price will stay the same, and the ceiling will stay the same until further
notice."
For consumers in oil-importing countries, OPEC's decision to stand pat
will mean stable or slightly higher prices this summer for petroleum produc-
ts such as gasoline, analysts believe.
OPEC's more knotty problem of managing production over the longer
term was put off until later this year, delegation sources said, presumably
when the cartel decides it can raise output without risk of depressing
demand.
That decision essentially ended the Organization of Petroleum Exporting
Countries' regular spring meeting that opened Thursday, although Nguema
said the ministers would meet again later Friday before formally adjour-
ning.
Several OPEC ministers said during breaks in the conference that they
hoped to raise or eliminate the production ceiling of 17.5 million barrels a
day after they were certain that demand was in balance with supply.
Thunderstornms sweep Midwest
A deluge from days of back-to-back thunderstorms claimed new territory
across the Midwest yesterday, closing highways with water and mudslides
as rain came down as hard as 4 inches an hour.
The storms that have pounded the Great Plains for two weeks stirred up at
least 19 tornadoes Thursday, flattening a number of homes and buildings
and injuring several people.
No one was killed by the twisters, but a truck driver was electrocuted near
Jacksonville, Ill., when winds blew a high-voltage power line onto his truck.
Rivers bloated by up to 8 inches of rain during the night poured from their
banks in parts of Nebraska, South Dakota, Missouri and Iowa.
Many roads and highways were blocked by water, snarling traffic and
stranding motorists in cities such as Omaha, Neb., and Columbia, Mo.
A mudslide closed a 10-mile stretch of U.S. 34 in Nebraska between
Nehawka and Union. Water was up to the bumpers of cars on Interstate 70
near Kingdom City, Mo. Police in Fremont, Neb., said many cars were
,. al~ n~wetr opthesfreets ..,
Shuttle to be used
for defense cargo-
SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) -
America's space shuttle will become "a
freeway into the future" but much of
the cargo it carries will be the
machines of national defense, the crew
for the next flight of the spaceship
Columbia said yesterday.
Astronauts Thomas Mattingly and
Henry Hartsfield told a news conferen-
ce that the military uses of the space
shuttle are expected as space becomes
"another arena" for routine human ac-
tivity.
Mattingly and Hartsfield, the crew
for the fourth flight of Columbia, will
become the first National Aeronautics
and Space Administration astronauts to
operate a Defense Department payload
in orbit, and all indications were that
they would not be the last.
"IT'S. THE PROPER thing to do,"
said Hartsfield, a retired Air Force
lieutenant colonel. "The shuttle is a
national asset. The military can derive
a great benefit from it."
He said he would hate to see space
"become a battlefield" but "the
national defense has its place there."
The astronauts declined to discuss
the military hardware that will be
carried with them into space aboard
Columbia, but from other sources, in-
cluding congressional testimony, the
payload as been identified as a super-
coled infrared telescope that will test
methods of detecting enemy missiles
and aircraft from space.
MEANWHILE, IN Cleveland, Gordon
Fullerton, pilot of the last shuttle
mission in March, said he agreed with
the need for a military presence in
other space, but emphasizfed peaceful
nature of the shuttle program.
"None of our defense effort has a
goal of bigger and better wars," Fuller-
ton said. "We're not going to mount
guns on the orbiter and go around
shooting things; it wasn't built for that
purpose. The shuttle is meant to tran-
sport things into space."
He said the shuttle's most important
direct benefit will be the ability to
directly launch monitoring satellites to
help increase agricultural production
around the world.
OUTER SPACE already is being used
by the military with satellites for sur-
veillance, communication and
navigation. Manifests for future flights
of Columbia and three other space shut-
tle orbiters now being built show that
more than 40 percent of the cargo will
be military gear.
Mattingly, a Navy captain, said
space flight in the future will become
very commonplace and just another
arena for mankind's activity, including
military. --. _
I