$3.1 Trillion Budget Cuts Some Discretionary Spending

Daily News Article   —   Posted on February 5, 2008

(by Monisha Bansal, Feb. 5, 2008, CNSNews.com) – Even before the White House released the largest budget proposal in American history on Monday, critics took issue with spending cuts in domestic programs.

President George W. Bush sent his fiscal 2009 budget proposal to Congress, asking for $3.1 trillion. While the overall budget has grown, proposed discretionary spending has been cut for several agencies, including the Departments of Transportation, Justice and Labor.

“This is another budget where a lot of critical domestic needs are being sacrificed to cover the costs of the Iraq war,” said Scott Lilly, a senior fellow at the liberal Center for American Progress.

He told Cybercast News Service that nearly two-thirds of the budget is mandatory spending, with about $1 trillion in discretionary spending, and more than half of that goes to the Defense Department.

“I certainly wish that we were spending the money that we spend on defense in a wiser and more constructive manner than we are,” Lilly said. “Domestic discretionary spending – which is somewhere around 15 percent of the total federal budget — is everything that most people encounter as far as their government is concerned, and that is where most of the cutbacks have been proposed.”

He noted that spending to improve infrastructure and other domestic programs such as the National Park Service has been cut.

However, Brian Riedl, a senior budget analyst with the conservative Heritage Foundation, said the budget is “similar to last year’s budget proposal.”

“The president offers a 4.9 percent discretionary spending increase, which is generous given the large discretionary spending increases we’ve seen in previous years,” he told Cybercast News Service. “Overall, domestic discretionary spending would increase by one percent.”

Riedl added that “non-defense discretionary spending has grown 55 percent under President Bush.” According to the Office of Management and Budget’s historical data, spending has increased in every category from fiscal year 2001 to fiscal year 2009.

“These programs can afford to go a year without another large budget increase,” Riedl said. “Education spending has grown 10 percent annually under President Bush. Anti-poverty spending now tops three percent of GDP for the first time in American history. Since 2001, education, health and anti-poverty spending have seen record increases.”

Dan Mitchell, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, agreed that domestic spending has expanded under Bush, whether measured in real dollars or as a share of Gross Domestic Product.

“Bush is not sincere about cutting domestic programs,” Mitchell told Cybercast News Service. “We desperately need to rein in the growing burden of government. We should be abolishing departments, such as Education, that Bush has radically expanded.”

Lilly, noted that the actual spending may change as Congress reviews the budget. “There was a huge fight last year, and Congress said you have to spend about $20 billion more than what has been requested for these domestic programs if you want to keep things headed in the right direction.”

With this being Bush’s final budget, Congress could also delay passing the budget until after a new administration takes office next year.

Toby Chaudhuri, communications director at the liberal Campaign for America’s Future, called the proposal “dead on arrival.”

“The president’s budget cuts vital services for everyday Americans to pay for more tax cuts to the most well off, expanding our deficits and increasing the strain on states already confronting budget problems as a result of the economic downturn,” he told Cybercast News Service.

“The president’s budget illustrates the exhaustion of the conservatism that has dominated our politics for over a quarter century. The right’s economic agenda has been largely adopted – tax cuts, free trade, deregulation, privatization, scorn for government and a cult of the CEO. And they got it wrong,” he said.

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