Jake:The Best News for JDSU today: GWBush announced that
" He is going to keep a VERY TIGHT Budget on ALL budgets
and cut spending."
This is exactly what I was talking about, an hour earlier.
The moral:
Any money not going to Washington, is money that can be used
by individuals to buy JDSU products.
TA
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February 12, 2001
Politics & Policy
Bush Budget Seeks to Rein In
The Growth of Government
interactive.wsj.com
By JOHN D. MCKINNON, SARAH LUECK and GREG JAFFE
Staff Reporters of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
WASHINGTON -- George W. Bush's next big crusade will be an attempt to rein in the growth of the federal government.
The president is aiming to submit a budget blueprint to Congress at the end of the month that will propose boosting total spending on discretionary government programs -- those outside Social Security and Medicare -- by less than 4% in the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, according to people inside the administration and in Congress who are familiar with budget preparations. That is a sharp deceleration from the 6% pace of the past three years.
With defense, education, the National Institutes of Health and Colin Powell's State Department all slated for big proposed spending increases, that means many other parts of the government -- such as the Energy Department and the Environmental Protection Agency -- are slated for proposed cuts to keep the overall spending total in line.
Ending a "Spending Binge"
The new administration doesn't "intend to continue the spending binge of the last three years," Budget Director Mitchell Daniels wrote in a curt, one-page letter last Wednesday to Tommy Thompson, secretary of health and human services, who had protested the squeeze on his department. Similar letters went out to the secretaries of energy, labor, and veterans affairs.
Some proposed trims would target agencies that grew sharply under President Clinton. The Labor Department would get about a 5% cut. Even Commerce Secretary Donald Evans, Mr. Bush's campaign chairman last year, found himself trooping off to do battle with the president's budget officials in meetings last week. Among the programs his agency finds on the chopping block: some of former Vice President Al Gore's favorite technology initiatives, including a $200 million technology-grant program.
Still, curbing spending in an era of surpluses can be a tough sell, and this tightfistedness, unaccustomed in Washington in recent years, is already sparking cries of protest on Capitol Hill and even inside the administration.
For example, an early draft of the Bush spending plan proposed deep cuts in the Federal Aviation Administration's budget for airports, air-traffic equipment and salaries. In response, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta met with a gathering of airline executives last week at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's headquarters near the White House and pleaded with them to lobby against his own administration's plan. "We're woefully short of where we need to be," he warned the industry executives.
Over the weekend, budget officials agreed to a higher FAA budget with no proposed cuts.
In addition to proposing a clear curb on growth in overall government spending, Mr. Bush is likely to use his first budget to demand a restructuring of numerous federal programs that, critics say, have either outlived their original purpose or have expanded beyond their original mission.
Cabinet Is Recruited
Mr. Daniels has asked cabinet members to find programs within their departments ripe for overhaul. Possibilities include consolidating the number of federally funded county agricultural offices or curbing federally funded veterans' health benefits to those who aren't poor and whose conditions don't stem from military service.
While gearing up for a fight on the size and scope of government, Mr. Bush doesn't appear likely to use his budget to continue the ideological wars long waged by many Republicans. People familiar with internal budget deliberations say the White House appears to have ruled out proposing cutting off funding altogether for perennial conservative targets like the National Endowment for the Arts or the Legal Services Corp.
As he unveils his budget on Feb. 28, Mr. Bush is likely to offer yet another justification for the $1.6 trillion tax-cut proposal he sent to Congress last week. So far, he has emphasized the need to stimulate the slowing economy and what he considers the simple fairness of giving taxpayers their money back. But the slow-growth budget will make the case that a tax cut is needed to keep surpluses from encouraging a further expansion of the government. Such limited spending, Bush aides say, is only possible if taxes are cut.
"A time of surplus is a time of great danger if you're worried about excessive spending," Mr. Daniels said in an interview soon after taking office.
Ronald Reagan used similar logic in the early 1980s, vowing to starve the beast of federal spending by cutting taxes. But Congress instead chose to cut taxes and spend more, feeding big deficits. Mr. Bush could have a tough time selling Congress and the public on the notion that the federal government is bloated and that spending is out of control. While tax receipts are unusually high, a good portion of that money isn't going to federal programs but to paying down the national debt. Despite the past three years of rapid spending increases, government spending as a portion of the economy has shrunk over the past two decades.
Limit on Discretionary Spending
Overall, the new administration is trying to hammer out a budget recommendation for fiscal 2002 that would limit discretionary spending -- the part that Congress allocates annually -- to about $660 billion, or a 3.6% increase from the 2001 level of about $637 billion.
That target is $5 billion below the level that the Congressional Budget Office has projected would be necessary in 2002 simply to make up for inflation and continue current policies. Justice Department officials warned glumly in an intra-agency e-mail last week that fat Clinton-era law-enforcement budgets appear to be a thing of the past. The Office of Management and Budget's proposed cuts for the Justice Department present "a grim picture in terms of the increases we have been accustomed to," the e-mail from the department's career budget staff said.
The e-mail attributed the cuts to the proposed Bush tax cuts. Attorney General John Ashcroft is fighting the level of those cuts and is expected to win at least a more modest reduction than the original proposal.
One of the biggest fights Mr. Bush's budgeters will face is over defense. Under Mr. Bush's plan, the Department of Defense budget would rise to $310 billion in 2002 from $296 billion in 2001, a 5% increase. Much of the extra money would go to higher military pay, more military housing and research and development.
The overall national-security budget, including some Energy Department funds, would rise to about $326 billion. Still, many members of Congress from both parties feel that isn't enough and have made clear that they will push for more.
On CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday, Democratic Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut said he felt it was wrong for President Bush to have campaigned on the need to correct defense-budget deficiencies and then to try to hold the Pentagon budget, as he put it, "flat."
The former Democratic candidate for vice president said "Our military needs money now for readiness, for spare parts," adding that he would also push to improve the quality of life for servicemen and women. |
