Did you hear the one about the Polish airline pilot who couldn’t even find Poland on his map? Had to land in West Berlin with his wife, children, and other family members aboard. The authorities back in Warsaw were not amused.
While GOP Senate leaders huddled last month to draw up plans for a budget that would “narrow the deficit” (translation: raise taxes), the Wall Street Journal was outlining the cost-cutting actions under way in our tightfisted Congress: the Senate Energy Committee, no doubt panicked by the recent decline in pump prices, added $2.2 billion to the Reagan budget proposal; the House Agriculture Committee took final action to appropriate $2 to $5 billion in increased price supports; the House Education Committee sang out in protest over student-loan cuts—John Ashbrook predicted the committee would tack $3 billion back onto the education budget. A poll of committee chairmen predicted that Congress will exceed the Reagan budget by $29 billion, roughly one-third of the deficit. And that’s a Congress talking about slicing $20 billion from the Pentagon. Look for Senators Baker, Dole, and Domenici to start explaining how increased spending narrows the deficit.
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