Congressional Republicans have vowed to balance the federal budget by 2002. So the hunt is on for ways to cut costs or raise revenues.
Each committee, including the House and Senate banking committees, has been told how much money it must come up with to meet budget goals.
For the banking committees, the magic figure is $2.4 billion in savings.
The following is a list of seven-year savings estimates the committees may choose from. The Congressional Budget Office is responsible for the most of the estimates, while the House Banking Committee staff supplied a few.
*Reduce by 50% federal flood insurance subsidies on buildings constructed before Jan. 1, 1976: $1.45 billion.
*Charge the thrift industry a special one-time fee of $6 billion to capitalize the Savings Association Insurance Fund: $900 million.
*Raise FHA mortgage insurance premiums: $636 million.
*Raise Federal Home Loan Bank system contributions to Resolution Funding Corp. bond interest from $300 million to $350 million, and cut in half the system's annual $100 million contribution to Affordable Housing Program: $350 million.
*Require state-chartered banks to pay federal examination fees either to the Federal Reserve or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.: $1.05 million.
*Reform the disposition process for the Federal Housing Administration's multifamily housing program: $210 million.
*Require the Federal Reserve to charge fees to cover the administrative costs of examining bank holding companies: $194 million.
*Replace the paper dollar with the dollar coin: $100 million over five years.
*Prohibit the Department of Housing and Urban Development from accepting FHA single-family mortgages into its portfolio for workouts: $75 million- $200 million.
*Require the Rural Housing and Community Development Service to recapture government subsidy payments once a borrower refinances or pays off a single-family direct loan mortgage: $36 million.
*Exempt from the Community Reinvestment Act banks with less than $100 million of assets, and allow self-certification of CRA compliance for banks with less than $250 million in assets: $31 million.
*Eliminate the Resolution Trust Corp. affordable housing program: $31 million.
*Lift the moratorium on foreign-bank exam fees imposed by the Federal Reserve: $24 million.
*Merge the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission: $27 million.
*Raise the designated reserve ratio for bank and thrift deposit insurance funds to 1.5% from 1.25%. Actual budget savings are unavailable, since the proposal would simply create a larger cushion to absorb losses caused by the failure of federally insured institutions.
