WE WILL SURVIVE

When the taxpayers of Cass County, North Dakota, learned that Washington was ready to spend $46 million on a new federal courthouse in downtown Fargo, they did something most politicians in Washington couldn't have imagined: the citizens tried to give the money back. Agitated by stories in the local newspaper, they sent angry letters to the federal judge overseeing the project, who then helped shrink the plan to $36 million. The state's two Democratic Senators joined the opposition and urged architects to design something that would cost no more than $23 million. Then planners scrapped the idea of a new building and settled instead on a modest $16 million addition to the existing courthouse.

And now it probably won't get built at all. Last month, in a prelude to the balanced-budget campaign, the U.S. Senate cut $16 billion in current spending, which included all funds for the courthouse and 94 other unbuilt federal projects in other states. Surprise of surprises: the people of Fargo don't seem to mind very much. Next, however, comes a far more severe test. The $1.4 trillion in cuts proposed last week by the Republicans in Congress would have a vastly larger impact on the lives of people in Fargo and elsewhere around the U.S. Indeed, the seven-year plan to balance the budget by 2002 set off a wave of indignant reaction from the President, Democrats in Congress, special-interest groups and lobbyists eager to protect their perpetual claims on the Treasury.

But after 15 years of failure to get the deficit under control, are these almost predictable reactions more reflexive than real? Do the Washington lobbyists and interest groups reflect popular sentiment, or just their own Beltway impulses? To see how a community confronts the prospect, two TIME correspondents spent a month examining the federal dependence of Fargo and its surrounding county, which reap $1.30 in benefits for every $1 in taxes the citizens send to Washington. While Fargo may lack the urban woes of larger cities, its federal take closely tracks the national average, and its share of spending closely matches the budget as a whole. Like most Midwesterners, the people of Fargo believe in the American myth of rugged self-reliance. And now they want to make it real.

With a few notable exceptions, Fargoans ranging from senior citizens to public broadcasters say they are ready to forgo much of the help they receive. But they pose two conditions: the cuts should be spread evenly around the country, and they must not be too abrupt. The residents of Fargo (pop. 77,000) aren't happy about the coming loss of benefits, but they believe it may be overdue. "I don't think the Federal Government can subsidize us forever," says 80-year-old C. Warner Litten, a retired health-care administrator who is probably Fargo's most respected town elder. "I hope the slash isn't too quick, but we can make up for it." Like many Americans, residents of Fargo increasingly doubt that a new courthouse or post office or Army Reserve center is necessary if it means more debt for their offspring. "Regardless of what happens, we're going to deal with it," says Larry Akers, 40, a red-bearded construction foreman sipping a screwdriver at a Fargo tenpins alley called The Bowler. "It's going to hurt. But we're borrowing from our grandchildren. And it's got to stop somewhere."