Posted on 02/07/2005 7:56:15 AM PST by SmithL
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush sent Congress a $2.57 trillion budget plan Monday that seeks deep spending cuts across a wide swath of government from reducing subsidies paid to the nation's farmers, cutting health care payments for poor people and veterans and trimming spending on the environment and education.
The budget - the most austere of Bush's presidency - would eliminate or vastly scale back 150 government programs. It will spark months of contentious debate in Congress, where lawmakers will fight to protect their favored programs.
The spending document projects that the deficit will hit a record $427 billion this year, the third straight year that the red ink in dollar terms has set a record. Bush projects that the deficit will fall to $390 billion in 2006 and gradually decline to $233 billion in 2009 and $207 billion in 2010.
Bush's 2006 spending plan, for the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, counts on a healthy economy to boost revenues by 6.1 percent to $2.18 trillion. Spending, meanwhile, would grow by 3.5 percent to $2.57 trillion.
However, outside defense, homeland security and the government's huge mandatory programs such as Social Security, Bush proposes cutting spending for the rest of government by 0.5 percent, the first such proposed cut since the Reagan administration battled with its own soaring deficits.
Of 23 major government agencies, 12 would see their budget authority reduced next year, including cuts of 9.6 percent at Agriculture and 5.6 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.
In his budget message to Congress, Bush said, "In order to sustain our economic expansion, we must continue pro-growth policies and enforce even greater spending restraint across the federal government."
But Democrats complained that Bush was resorting to draconian cuts that would hurt the needy in order to protect his first term tax cuts that primarily benefited the wealthy.
"This budget is part of the Republican plan to cut Social Security benefits while handing out lavish tax breaks for multimillionaires," said Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. "Its cuts in veterans programs, health care and education reflect the wrong priorities and its huge deficits are fiscally irresponsible."
Bush's budget does not reflect the costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security by allowing younger workers to set up private investment accounts. It also does not include any new spending for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, The administration has said it will seek in coming weeks an additional $80 billion for the cost of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for this year.
Critics also contend that the five-year deficit projections also mask the costs of some Bush initiatives such as making his first-term tax cuts permanent, the bulk of which do not show up until after 2010. The budget puts the 10-year cost of making the president's tax cut proposals permanent at $1.29 trillion.
Bush's budget proposed increasing military spending by 4.8 percent to $419.3 billion in 2006. However, even with the increase a number of major weapons programs, including Bush's missile defense system and the B-2 stealth bomber, would see cuts from this year's levels.
Aside from defense and homeland security, favored Bush programs included a new $1.5 billion high school performance program, expanded Pell Grants for low-income college students and more support for community health clinics.
One of the most politically sensitive targets on Bush's hit list is the government support program for farmers, which he wants to trim by $5.7 billion over the next decade, which would represent cuts to farmers growing a wide range of cuts from cotton and rice to corn, soybeans and wheat.
Overall, the administration projected saving $8.2 billion in agriculture programs over the next decade including trimming food stamp payments to the poor by $1.1 billion.
Other programs set for cuts include the Army Corps of Engineers, whose dam and other waterway projects are extremely popular in Congress; the Energy Department; several health programs under the Health and Human Services Department and federal subsidies for the Amtrak passenger railroad.
About one-third of the programs being targeted for elimination are in the Education Department, including federal grant programs for local schools in such areas as vocational education, anti-drug efforts and Even Start, a $225 million literacy program.
In all, the president proposed savings of $137 billion over 10 years in mandatory programs with much of that occurring in reductions in Medicaid, the big federal-state program that provides health care for the poor, and in payments the Veterans Administration makes for health care. The administration proposed no savings for Medicare, the giant health care program for the elderly.
Many of the spending cuts in the budget are repeats of efforts the administration has proposed and Congress has rejected previously.
I'll bet the phrases "2.57 trillion" and "austere" have never before appeared in the same story.
>> and 5.6 percent at the Environmental Protection Agency.
I was so hoping to see that the EPA was scrapped. Shucks, maybe next time.
Finally, some fiscal responsibility from our President. Reducing the size and scope of government is one of the major tenets of conservatism. Good move.
I can hear the liberals whine already. This has to be done as fast as possible.
Here we go. "Bush wants to kill old widows and black children. "
EPA, D of Ed, Commerce, Civil rights, etc.. Get rid of those, and I'll be happy.
If 'conservatism' is no longer about fiscal restraint, then what is left?
"Here we go. "Bush wants to kill old widows and black children. ""
Only in states where there is a RAT Senator up for reelection.
You're kidding, right?
NPR/PBS? Wanna bet they get funded?
2005
BUSH:"In order to sustain our economic expansion, we must continue pro-growth policies and enforce even greater spending restraint across the federal government."
2005
DIMs: "BUSH wants to starve the poor and cut every program to the bone. What we need is increases, not cuts in social programs"
First paragraph of the AP release, no less! Bush hates the poor and the veterans he sends off to die! Film at eleven!!
Those figures don't include the $80 billion Bush wants for Iraq, the cost of making the tax cuts permanent, or the cost of allowing for private accounts for Social Security. So I wonder what the defecits really will be? How how really meaningless these supposed cuts actually are.
Getting the job done right?
NPR/PBS and Amtrak- need to be defunded ASAP!
Friends in DC refer to this bueget as the "Lobbiests' Protection Act of 2005."
Cynics and malcontents are never satisfied.
Isn't that the truth. Some people will gripe no matter what happens. Must just be their nature.
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