Reality has set in over at the White House — at least, in terms of budgeting. The Washington Post reports that the White House is telling government departments that their 2006 budgets, should Bush be reelected, will be slashed because of the record deficit. You know, the one caused by the massive tax cuts for the rich.
The White House put government agencies on notice this month that if President Bush is reelected, his budget for 2006 may include spending cuts for virtually all agencies in charge of domestic programs, including education, homeland security and others that the president backed in this campaign year.
… J.T. Young, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, said the memo, titled “Planning Guidance for the FY 2006 Budget,” is a routine “process document” to help agency officials begin establishing budget procedures for 2006. In no way should it be interpreted as a final policy decision, or even a planning document, he said.
“Agencies have asked for this sort of direction,” Young said. “Budgeting is basically a year-long process, and you have to start somewhere. They’ll get more guidance as the year goes along.”
The funding levels referred to in the memo would be a tiny slice out of the federal budget — $2.3 billion, or 0.56 percent, out of the $412.7 billion requested for fiscal 2005 for domestic programs and homeland security that is subject to Congress’s annual discretion.
But the cuts are politically sensitive, targeting popular programs that Bush has been touting on the campaign trail. The Education Department; a nutrition program for women, infants and children; Head Start; and homeownership, job-training, medical research and science programs all face cuts in 2006.
“Despite [administration] denials, this memorandum confirms what we suspected all along,” said Thomas S. Kahn, Democratic staff director on the House Budget Committee. “Next February, the administration plans to propose spending cuts in key government services to pay for oversized tax cuts.”
But with the budget deficit exceeding $400 billion this year, tough and painful cuts are unavoidable, said Brian M. Riedl, a budget analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
Federal agencies’ discretionary spending has risen 39 percent in the past three years. “I think the public is ready for spending cuts,” Riedl said. “Not only does the public understand there’s a lot of waste in the federal budget, but the public is ready to make sacrifices during the war on terror.”
I see… the public is “ready to make sacrifices”. Well, I think there have been plenty of sacrifices already: their sons and daughters sent to an ill-advised war, many killed.
Why, I wonder, does the public need to sacrifice rather than the massive tax cuts for the rich be rolled back? Oh, I forgot… the rich obviously aren’t the public under this administration.
Keep this in mind when you go to the polls in November: all those great plans that Bush touted a while ago, such as fighting AIDS in Africa and hydrogen cars, never managed to be funded as he proposed. And when he talks about education and children in this campaign, take it with an enormous grain of salt:
The administration has widely touted a $1.7 billion increase in discretionary funding for the Education Department in its 2005 budget, but the 2006 guidance would pare that back by $1.5 billion. The Department of Veterans Affairs is scheduled to get a $519 million spending increase in 2005, to $29.7 billion, and a $910 million cut in 2006 that would bring its budget below the 2004 level.
Also slated for cuts are the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation, the Small Business Administration, the Transportation Department, the Social Security Administration, the Interior Department and the Army Corps of Engineers.
… The Women, Infants and Children nutrition program was funded at $4.7 billion for the fiscal year beginning in October, enough to serve the 7.9 million people expected to be eligible. But in 2006, the program would be cut by $122 million. Head Start, the early-childhood education program for the poor, would lose $177 million, or 2.5 percent of its budget, in fiscal 2006.
The $78 million funding increase that Bush has touted for a homeownership program in 2005 would be nearly reversed in 2006 with a $53 million cut. National Institutes of Health spending would be cut 2.1 percent in 2006, to $28 billion, after a $764 million increase for 2005 that brought the NIH budget to $28.6 billion.
Even homeland security — a centerpiece of the Bush reelection campaign — would be affected. Funding would slip in 2006 by $1 billion, to $29.6 billion, although that would still be considerably higher than the $26.6 billion devoted to that field in 2004, according to an analysis of the computer printout by House Budget Committee Democrats.
