Burlington Free Press

Peter Welch of Vermont and three other Demo­cratic congressmen will re­lease legislation today aimed at trimming the bal­looning national deficit by more than $70 billion in the next 10 years.

Republicans in Con­gress have been roundly criticizing Democratic leaders for proposing pro­grams that spend more at a time the deficit has grown vastly as a percentage of the U.S. economy's output. Welch is a founding mem­ber of the four-man work­ing group that met to come up with cuts and savings.

The other members are Gary Peters of Michigan, who is chairing the group, John Adler of New Jersey, and Jim Himes of Connect­icut.

Each is pushing his own proposal: Welch wants to implement cuts the De­fense Department is al­ready calling for among its own systems. He would also require that the de­fense secretary consolidate military exchanges for effi­ciency savings.

Welch's office said those proposals could be worth $2.6 billion in 2011 and at least $4.1 billion over 10 years. Other pro­posals include Sen. Peters' call to eliminate tax loop­holes for oil companies and redundant federal re­search spending; Adler's to implement electronic pay stubs for Treasury employ­ees and eliminate the Overseas Private Invest­ment Corp., which subsi­dizes companies that in­vest abroad; and Himes' to reduce commodity pay­ments to wealthy farmers and cut the reimbursement rate to private crop insur­ers.