Posted on 02/05/2005 7:38:00 AM PST by bayourod
ASHINGTON, Feb. 4 - President Bush's budget for 2006 cuts spending for a wide range of public health programs, including several to protect the nation against bioterrorist attacks and to respond to medical emergencies, budget documents show.
Faced with constraints on spending caused by record budget deficits and the demands of the war in Iraq, administration officials said on Friday that they had increased the budget for some health programs but cut many others, including some that address urgent health care needs.
The documents show, for example, that Mr. Bush would cut spending for several programs that deal with epidemics, chronic diseases and obesity. His plan would also cut the budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention by 9 percent, to $6.9 billion, the documents show.
The cuts are part of an attempt to control the federal deficit, while increasing spending on certain priority programs. Administration officials have said that in the budget, to be unveiled on Monday, Mr. Bush will propose that overall domestic spending, aside from entitlements, grows less than the rate of inflation next year.
But the administration is proposing to increase the Pentagon budget by 4.8 percent, to $419.3 billion in the 2006 fiscal year, according to Defense Department budget documents obtained by The New York Times. That sum does not include the costs of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, now running about $5 billion a month. Within a few weeks, the administration is expected to request about $80 billion to cover those costs.
The president's approach to domestic programs is illustrated in the way he balances competing claims at the Centers for Disease Control.
Mr. Bush requests money to expand a national stockpile of vaccines and antibiotics. But the public health emergency fund of the centers, which helps state and local agencies prepare for bioterror attacks, would be cut 12.6 percent, to $1 billion.
In the event of an attack, states could use that money to distribute drugs and vaccines from the stockpile - for example, by conducting a mass immunization campaign against smallpox, anthrax or other infectious agents.
Kim A. Elliott, deputy director of the Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit advocacy group, said, "It's robbing Peter to pay Paul when you build up the national stockpile at the expense of bioterrorism preparedness activities at the state and local level."
Administration officials acknowledged that some of the proposed cuts would affect high-priority programs. But they said that the budget this year was exceptionally tight and that, in some cases, several programs served the same basic purpose.
Over all, the president's budget would reduce the Department of Health and Human Services' discretionary spending - the amounts subject to annual appropriations - by 2.4 percent, to $68 billion. According to documents, obtained from budget analysts who opposed the cuts, those figures do not include Medicare costs, which will increase sharply with the addition of a prescription drug benefit in 2006.
A Public Health Service program for "chronic disease prevention and health promotion" would be cut by 6.5 percent, to $841 million in 2006. The program finances efforts to prevent and control obesity, which federal health officials say has reached epidemic proportions.
The president's budget would also eliminate a block grant that provides $131 million for preventive health services. Under federal law, the money is used to "address urgent health problems," which vary from state to state.
Under the president's request, the budget of the National Institutes of Health, which doubled from 1998 to 2003, would rise by 0.7 percent, to $28.7 billion next year. That is much less than what would be needed to keep pace with the costs of biomedical research, which are rising more than 3.5 percent a year.
For the National Science Foundation, Mr. Bush will request $5.6 billion in 2006, an increase of 2.4 percent, budget documents show. Mr. Bush requested an increase last year as well, but Congress ended up making a small cut in the agency's budget for this year.
Is this a real spending cut, or a cut in projected budget increases?
How about...
Faced with constraints on spending caused by record budget deficits and the demands of the war in Iraq out of control democrat spending, administration officials said on Friday that they had increased the budget for some health programs but cut many others, including some that address urgent health care needs.
Thats a program that can be cut TOTALLY, cut the fat out of the budget (sorry couldn't resist)
This is just the beginning of the carping. Let's see what those deficit hawk dems have to say about actually trying to do something about the debt.
Oh my God. You mean state and local agencies will need to fund themselves?? What horror.
Women and minorities most affected.
Yeah, yeah, women, children and minorities hardest hit, yada yada
The creatures in congress will have to decide whether they want to fund serious anti terror methods or they want to fund projects to determine if sweat smells bad, etc.
He's gutting out entire programs. About 130 million worth to start. He's been trying to cut unecessary programs for a couple of years, but the Democrats kept blocking.
That should have been CUTTING out, not "gutting out"...yeesh. Use spell check for a change and just stick the wrong word in there instead.
The county I live in probably has as many deer as people yet we have had anti-terror training programs forced on us.
I am not diminishing the importance of these programs in obvious areas(NYC,Washington DC.,Power generation sites) but it is a waste of money in small rural areas that wouldn`t be any kind of a target.Money not well spent.
Really. 841 million to fight fat people seems like more than enough, considering the alternatives. On the other hand, I see no cuts in the NIH program for wasting grant money studying magical and superstitious folk remedies, i.e. "complemantary and alternative medicine." One of Tom Dunghill Harkin's favorite fetishes.
Did you hear Rush several days ago?
Now what I propose is a complete cutting off of funds to NPR, PBS, and National Endowment for the Arts. There are a whole host of stupid programs which are nothing more than gimmie's to the liberal causes.
Cut food stamps and you will cut half the fat in America.
Didn't he say in the SOTU address that he will build Government Health Clinics in poor neighborhoods? It would be cheaper to give them bus tickets.
Really. 841 million to fight fat people seems like more than enough, considering the alternatives.
Actually this is disturbing as obviously Mc Donalds is a clear case of a neo-islamo-fascist plot to render every American incapable of running away from biological and chemical warfare agents.
That program really need 10 times the funding given to it, or we're all gonnna diiiiiiieeeee ;O)
It's exactly what you said - "a cut in projected budget increases. Instead of getting 6-7% - they're probably only getting 2-3%.
We must make this clear to the public.
Also .. these are the same people who were whining that the PRESIDENT WAS SPENDING LIKE A DRUKEN SAILOR. I think we should remind them of that - as nicely as possible.
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