AP News, February 3rd, 2008
President Bush on Monday will release a $3 trillion budget for 2009. Here is a look at some of its elements:
_DEFICITS: The plan will claim deficits in the $400 billion range for this year and next. For the 2009 budget year covered by the Bush plan, deficits are likely to rise higher than Bush predicts after additional war costs are added.
_DEFENSE: The Pentagon would get a $35 billion increase to $515 billion for core programs, about 7 percent, with war costs additional. Another $21 billion would go to the Energy Department for nuclear weapons programs. A $70 billion "bridge fund" for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would give the next president time to consider options, with tens of billions of dollars more needed regardless of any strategy shift.
_DOMESTIC APPROPRIATIONS: These would be essentially frozen at current levels, with most services being cut after inflation and population growth are factored in.
_HOMELAND SECURITY: Overall, the budget for homeland security programs will increase by almost 11 percent, with a 19 percent increase for border security and immigration enforcement efforts, including new money to secure the border with Mexico.
_DIPLOMATS: In a victory for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Bush wants to hire nearly 1,100 new diplomats to address severe staffing shortages and begin an effort to double the size of the State Department over the next decade.
_MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: The programs will see almost $200 billion in cuts over the next five years, about three times the savings proposed last year but rejected by Congress. Much of the savings would come from freezing reimbursement rates for most health care providers for three years and from cutting payments to hospitals serving large numbers of the uninsured poor.
_HEALTH: Health and Human Services Department funding would be cut by $2 billion, amounting to a 3 percent reduction. Funding for the National Institutes of Health would be frozen. The Food and Drug Administration would receive a 6 percent boost to $2.4 billion to ramp up food and drug safety efforts.
_EDUCATION: Education programs would be frozen at $60 billion, with no increase to keep pace with inflation. Bush is pushing to restore $600 million lawmakers cut from Reading First, which serves low-income children. Title I grants, the main source of federal funding for poor students, would rise about 3 percent. Special education would receive $11.3 billion, a $330 million increase.
_MILESTONES: Bush's proposal would be the first budget to propose spending $3 trillion. The budget hit $2 trillion for the first time in 2002, also when Bush was in office, and reached $1 trillion for the first time in 1987 during the Reagan administration.
