Nation: Heat from the HUD Chief

Much to the chagrin of the White House, one of the loudest complaints about some of the proposed budget reductions has come from within the Administration itself.

In a memo, which was quickly leaked, to the budget cut ters at the Office of Management and Budget, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Patricia Harris, 54. the Illinois-born Pullman-car waiter's daughter who is the only black in the Cabinet, heatedly complained that the ceiling proposed by the OMB on her department's budget (currently $9.1 billion) was "barely defensible." If OMB had its way, she asserted, the subsidized housing program in the 1980 budget would not only be "socially regressive" but "unprecedentedly low" in comparison with previous Democratic and even Republican programs. It would, she argued, allow the construction of only 291,000 partially and fully subsidized public housing units under existing programs, in contrast with the 333.000 that will be completed under the current budget. OMB's tightfistedness, she warned, "would risk the disaffection of major segments of those political constituencies" that are vital to the Administration.

The episode illustrates just why cutting a federal budget is so difficult. Essentially, Harris says she wants about $1.5 billion more than OMB is willing to give her in order to continue subsidized housing construction at close to the present level. OMB objects to her complaint, arguing that what is really pinching HUD's housing money is its plan for a new $1.3 billion demonstration project involving mixed-income rental housing. OMB insists that if that costly project was shelved, HUD would indeed be able to build almost as many new housing units as it says it wants. Whoever is correct—and that may never be determined, given the intricacies of federal budget making—what irks the White House most is the fact that the dispute became public. Though HUD officials deny that they leaked the memo, Carter's aides were incensed. Said one: "The job of a Secretary is to defend positions taken by a President, rather than publish something that will embarrass the President."

Harris has voiced policy peeves vehemently before, involving such matters as housing-loan practices of the Federal National Mortgage Association and the White House position on the Bakke case. The Administration is known to have been none too happy about her outspokenness. Yet she is unrepentant about her bout with OMB.

Says she: "My concern has been for people who are unable to provide for their own needs and who have been disadvantaged by this society." She does not see "any problems with the ability of the Secretary of HUD to administer the programs." As for her boss, she says: "I do not know what the President's final decision will be with the HUD programs. I do fight. I always do, of course."