When the White House released President George W. Bush's 2006 budget proposal early in February, it signaled the start of a peculiar kind of theater season in Washington.
Beginning with the publication of the 892-page, $2.6 trillion proposal and continuing through Congress's approval of the final appropriations bill sometime in the fall, a cast of thousands will become involved with the evolution of the president's spending goals into how the federal government actually functions in 2006.
First comes the administration's explanation of its proposal.
---"I would call it a disciplined budget," Bush said in a speech at the Detroit Economic Club. "My budget reduces spending --- reduces spending --- on nonsecurity discretionary programs by 1 percent --- the most disciplined proposal since Ronald Reagan was in office. It holds discretionary spending below the rate of inflation. It includes vital reforms in mandatory spending that will save taxpayers $137 billion over the next decade. It meets our nation's essential needs; it keeps us on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009."
---Jim Towey, director of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, stressed in a teleconference that "not only is President Bush's budget compassionate, it gives greater choices to the poor and disadvantaged, in terms of social service providers and access to programs, and it maintains a vital safety net for those in need."
That is followed quickly by various organizations' analyses of major cuts and changes.
---"The president's proposed FY 2006 budget would slash crucial services for children, the elderly, disabled and low-wage families to protect the well-connected," said a release from the Coalition on Human Needs, an alliance of dozens of national organizations including Catholic Charities USA, the Salvation Army, the Congressional Hunger Center, the United Way and Easter Seals.
The coalition said the administration plan would "end medical care for millions of low-income Americans by cutting $60 billion from Medicaid; starve food stamps by $1 billion ... cut education for children by $4.3 billion and end the $225 million Even Start Literacy program and the community food and nutrition program."
---"The administration has proposed one of the most tightfisted, miserly budgets for veterans' programs in recent memory," said a statement from the Disabled American Veterans. It said that at a time when medical costs are skyrocketing and the number of veterans seeking health care is growing, the administration proposed funding medical care with $3.4 billion less than needed. Some veterans also would be hit with a $250 annual user fee for health care and doubled co-payments for prescriptions.
---The American Federation of Teachers said that by cutting the Department of Education's budget by more than half a billion dollars, Bush's proposal "flies in the face of his re-election campaign that stressed family values and compassion" and that it "represents a huge reversal in the federal government's commitment to education" by inadequately funding Pell grants for college tuition and programs such as those for disadvantaged and disabled students.
What begins in earnest now is the part public, part behind-the-scenes process wherein House and Senate budget committees draft, review and eventually vote on budget legislation before sending bills to votes by the full House and Senate.
Jim Horney, a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, explained how the time-honored tradition of protecting programs dear to the hearts of certain constituencies will play out.
In all, Bush's budget would eliminate or dramatically reduce 150 programs at various levels of government, most in social services, education and transportation.
By comparison, Bush's 2005 budget proposal released about this time last year proposed killing or slashing 128 programs the administration said were ineffective. All but a handful were restored by the time the final appropriations bill was approved in November.
Members of Congress will begin looking out for programs they consider valuable, and interest groups will crank up their lobbying efforts to try to protect others.
For instance, although the president's budget calls for ending federal subsidies of Amtrak, that's a program House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., strongly supports.
"Amtrak or veterans' medical care are fairly unlikely to get deep cuts," Horney said. "You'll see deeper cuts in programs without constituencies." Recipients of child-care subsidies, for example, may not have the political connections necessary to protect benefits for more than 300,000 people who would be cut over the next three years.
The real fancy footwork comes when all those competing interests are vying for chunks of a budget that must be reduced dramatically.
Tom Shellabarger, domestic policy adviser to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, said that in the 20 years he has been following the process, the budget approved by Congress always ends up approximately resembling what the president sought, no matter what the partisan makeup is of the two houses of Congress and who is in the White House.
If, for instance, the president sets a goal of an 11.5 percent cut in funding for Housing and Urban Development, as Bush did this year, chances are Congress won't be approving a HUD budget at this year's level.
"And if Congress keeps even close to that amount, a lot of folks are going to be struggling to find housing," Shellabarger said.
While there clearly are some programs that are more protected than others, Shellabarger said even something as important to the president as faith-based initiatives isn't guaranteed favored status when budgets are being cut.
One of the oldest programs of the federal government that has long been run largely by religious organizations --- housing for the elderly --- was budgeted by the White House to be cut by $5 million, down to $741 million. Housing for people with disabilities, another program largely run by church affiliates, would be cut nearly in half, to just $120 million.
"This is a zero-sum game," Shellabarger said. "With the deficit where it is, they've really backed themselves into a corner." ---CNS |