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FINANCIAL MATTERS. FISCAL YEARS 1991-1993

Mrs. Suttenfield gave an overview of the salient feature of the written
presentation on financial matters which appears below and which had been
circulated in advance.  Graphs and tables to which she referred are reproduced in the following text.  Her report was divided into two parts: (1) a status report on the institution's pending budget requests and (2) an analysis of the Smithsonian's budget.

Mrs. Suttenfield noted that the Smithsonian is presently awaiting final
Congressional action on the appropriation request for fiscal year 1992, which will begin October 1.  With difference between the House and the Senate levels yet to be resolved, there are two principal areas of concern to the Institution that will be the focus of the conferees.  First, the Senate will be considering an across-the-board reduction totaling $9.2 million, or roughly three percent, which would be applied against the Smithsonian's operating and capital budgets for next year.  Secondly, it has also been proposed to eliminate $2.9 million needed to cover the costs of water and sewer services provided to the Institution by the District of Columbia without canceling the requirement to pay these charges.  (Just last year the Congress provided the necessary funds to the Institution to cover that new cost which the Smithsonian began paying in the previous fiscal year.)

This second loss of funding is essentially the equivalent of another one percent reduction to the Institution's operating budget.  Together, these reductions would have the effect of reducing Smithsonian's operating budget by four percent for the next fiscal year and would exacerbate the difficulties that the Institution now faces in sustaining present programs.  These programs are already suffering from other across-the-board reductions that the Smithsonian has experiences over the last couple years, along with