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money.” \(It could not be learned how much of his own money Gramm gives away to charity, but there are indications. From 1987 to 1988, Gramm took in $62,005 in honoraria and kept all the money for personal use, according to a Common Cause report. In the same two-year period, Senators overall received $5,862,408 in honoraria and contributed $1,464,876 to Perhaps the most often mentioned defense of Phil Gramm’s tenure in the Senate is that faced with rising budget deficits Gramm has held his ground. But in his strong support of the Reagan administration and across-theboard spending cuts, Gramm has supported a public policy that has actually cost the taxpayers hard earned money . In Gramm and Reagan’s zeal to reduce the size of government much of the staff responsible for oversight have also been reduced. According to congressional officials and a recent investigation by The New York Times, the cost for cutting the “managerial muscle that was responsible for watching over the governments’ financial liabilities,” as the Times put it, will reach into “the tens of billions of dollars in losses and the potential for untold billions more. ” The total of the government’s annual losses from defaulted loans to uncollected debts like taxes owed by people and companies is now bigger than the annual Federal budget deficit, according to the Times. In 1980, when he served in the House, Gramm supported a budget substitute that would have called for a 20 percent acrossthe-board decrease in funding for 17 regulatory agencies. The measure failed, but reflected the Senators priorities in later years. Charles A. Bowsher, who heads the General Accounting Office, told a Senate panel in November: “When you look at what happened in the S&L crisis and look at the situation at H.U.D. and things like that, if we had proper systems, if we had the adequate financial reporting, if we had the right number of auditors and to go out and check this, we would have saved billions of dollars. In other words, we have been penny-wise and really pound foolish here.” To a native New Yorker such as myself, Phil Gramm reminds me of another junior Senator. Much like New York’s Alfonse D’Amato, Gramm has escaped close public scrutiny. I have always thought that if the truth were really known about D’Amato he would be finished, but I have been proven incorrect. Gramm hasn’t faced the kind of ethical questions D’Amato has so success fully dodged over the years. Most recently, Mark Green, a Democrat who ran against D’Amato in 1986, filed a complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee accusing D’Amato of using improper influence in federal housing programs. Gramm’s record alone is an example of the kind of public service he has provided. Green received 41 percent of the vote in the general election although he was never considered a serious challenger. By June of 1986, D’Amato had raised $5 million for his re-election bid, prompting stronger candidates than Green to stay out of the race. Similarly, Gramm has amassed a fortune in campaign money. Like the GreenD’Amato race, in the Texas U.S. Senate race, an underfunded, virtually unknown, politically reasonable candidate is challenging an incumbent with broad appeal and a disturbing record of public service. But what sets Gramm apart from D’Amato is that he is politically more astute and much more powerful. Gramm will likely walk confidently into the Senate for another six years. Now one of the most pressing questions about Phil Gramm is whether he will be able to stride so easily into the White House in 1996. O TEXAS CIVIL LIBERTIES UNION 1611 East First St., Austin, Texas 78702 angrnItiltlicyfAt 40 1111: Ti at 0 bti[itvvit O it Vow t54h A Thriiiv[iittivu We urge readers to support the Observer and the Texas Civil Liberties Union -Both champions of liberty in Texas. J. Richard Avena James C. Harrington Executive Director Legal Director Don Smith President LA UNION AMERICANA DE DERECHOS CIVILES EN TEXAS THE TEXAS OBSERVER 25