The U.S. House Budget Committee`s roadshow got off to a rocky start here Sunday night.
The Democratic-controlled committee plans a public hearing Monday on President Reagan`s proposed 1987 budget, with testimony to begin at 9 a.m. in the Illinois Room on the University of Illinois at Chicago campus, 750 S. Halsted St. After its Chicago debut, the committee will make one-day stops in Lowell, Mass.; Tallahassee, Fla.; Dallas; and San Francisco.
On Sunday night, organizers scheduled a Loop press conference to call attention to the hearings, but the two politicians who were to get top billing failed to appear.
Mayor Harold Washington was ill with the flu, according to his aides, and U.S. Rep. William Gray (D., Pa.), committee chairman, was delayed trying to get from O`Hare International Airport to the Loop. Other participants carried on and blasted Reagan`s proposed budget.
Democrats had hoped the press conference, which was followed by a private dinner, would be a rousing start to a week of national attention focused on Reagan`s budget.
”I`m disappointed the mayor didn`t show up, but if a person`s got the flu, it`s a legitimate excuse,” said U.S. Rep. Marty Russo (D., Ill.).
”Bill`s flight got tied up. There wasn`t anything he could do either.”
Russo said he expected a warm reception from the public Monday.
”I think that they`ll focus on the hearings,” he said. ”We just made ourselves available. It`s up to the press to show up. . . . It`s a democracy. You can`t put a gun to someone`s head to force them to come.”
Russo said the hearings were not intended as an attack on Reagan`s $994 billion budget. ”What we`re trying to do is bring the President`s budget to the people,” he said.
During the brief news conference, however, Democrats took turns sniping at the budget, which Reagan introduced last week.
Although Washington was not present, Sharon Gist Gilliam, the mayor`s budget director, read a statement from the mayor, in which Washington declared that ”Ronald Reagan has declared war on the cities.”
Reagan`s federal urban aid cuts would strip almost $277 million in federal funds from the City of Chicago, or about 45 percent of the $622.2 million the city expects to get by the end of this fiscal year, according to estimates of city officials.
A spokesman for the Cook County Republican Party said the organization plans to protest outside the hearings Monday morning.
”We protest this hearing because the Democratic committee members are engaging in a taxpayer-funded public relations extravaganza instead of doing their job,” said a spokesman for Donald Totten, Cook County Republican chairman. ”Rather than working on how to restore sanity to the budget, the Democrats are traveling around the country at taxpayer expense to hear canned, wind-up testimony.”
