Feldstein Will Advise Policymakers

The House Ways and Means Committee is hosting a retreat in the Smoky Mountains next weekend for its members and 10 prominent economists, including Martin S. Feldstein '61, the Baker Professor of Economics, to discuss strategies on how to reduce the nation's budget deficit, participants said yesterday.

The weekend meeting in Gatlinsburg, Tennessee, which the powerful House committee has planned for several months, will focus on government spending patterns, taxes and social insurance programs. The Ways and Means Committee, chaired by Daniel Rostenkowski (D-III.), is one of the House's most powerful committees, controlling all requests for fiscal expenditures before they reach the floor of Congress.

"I am going to talk about how I think it's very important for them to face up to the budget deficit," Feldstein said last night in an interview. "I'm going to be very much interested to see the extent to which they're prepared to talk about the specifics of spending reductions or tax increases."

At the annual meetings, said scholars who have attended the three-day retreats in the past, speakers spend five or 10 minutes making short presentations and then the congressmen and academics have informal discussions. Aside from the budget, those in attendance often discuss electoral politics, they said.

"I don't remember a lot of small talk," said Feldstein, who has appeared at two earlier Ways and Means conferences on taxes. "The subject was really professional," said the former head of the President's Council of Economic Advisors.

Feldstein has favored raising taxes to balance the budget and has proposed cutting federal spending across the board. When Feldstein stepped down from his advisory post, it was reported that the fiscal conservative left because he disagreed with the pace of budget deficit reductions.

The Ways and Means Committee does not release the names of the