Bush Ready to Roll Out His 2005 Budget
Jan 28, 5:07 PM (ET)
By ALAN FRAM
(AP) President Bush speaks, Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2004, in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the...
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WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush is ready to roll out his 2005 budget just days after Congress finished this year's and demonstrated anew that the adage "dead on arrival" did not apply to most of his fiscal plans.
In what analysts and lawmakers agree was an impressive string of successes, Bush won most of the broad priorities he proposed in his $2.2 trillion budget for 2004. He scored a major tax cut, new Medicare prescription drug benefits and money for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At the same time, the president held the spending that Congress controls to 3 percent growth.
That is a switch from some of his recent predecessors. Democrats who controlled at least one chamber of Congress under the first President Bush and under President Reagan often described those administrations' budgets as "dead on arrival" and forced both to accept tax and spending increases.
On the other hand, despite the GOP takeover of Congress two years into his tenure, President Clinton won repeated spending concessions from lawmakers wary of battling him.
Lawmakers have not been rubber stamps for the current president, trimming his defense request while spending more than he asked for highways, public works and veterans. They ignored Bush's plan to make tax cuts permanent, scaled back his proposal to stop taxing corporate dividends, blocked his energy bill and pockmarked spending measures with thousands of home-district projects.
Even so, aided by a friendly Republican-run Congress and a political climate that has diverted attention from record federal deficits, the budget that Bush proposed last February fared as well on Capitol Hill as any president's in recent memory, said legislators and other observers.
"The president practically wrote the omnibus" $373 billion spending bill Congress completed last week, said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a group favoring balanced budgets. "This president has been extremely successful in getting what he's asked."
So successful that he has yet to cast a veto after three years in office. He often uses the threat of a veto to get his way.
Bush issued 19 such threats as Congress considered the 13 annual spending bills for this year. In the end, lawmakers dropped challenges to administration plans to change overtime pay rules, retain restrictions on trade with Cuba and give more government work to private contractors.
Conservatives say they want Bush to veto a bill over excessive domestic spending, where they say the White House has been too lax.
Six of this year's 10 domestic spending bills cost more than Bush proposed, according to House Appropriations Committee figures. The conservative Citizens Against Government Waste estimates all 13 bills had more than 10,000 "earmarks" for home-district projects.
"This administration has been unwilling to fight those battles," said Steve Ellis, vice president of the conservative Taxpayers for Common Sense.
Administration officials cite Bush's victories on defense, domestic security, taxes, Medicare and overall spending restraint.
"Taken collectively, they are a very impressive record for a given year," said Chad Kolton, spokesman for the White House budget office.
Bush plans to release a $2.3 trillion budget for 2005 on Monday. In a bid for conservatives' support, it will propose holding spending for nondefense, nondomestic security programs to an increase of about 0.5 percent.
Bush's first two years in office, dominated by recession and the response to the 2001 terrorist attacks, saw him secure big defense and domestic security increases and two major tax cuts. Congress won domestic boosts as well.
Among the major priorities that Bush proposed last year were:
_Tax reductions totaling $1.3 trillion over 10 years. The bill he signed had $330 billion in tax cuts. That number is expected to grow should lawmakers, as anticipated, make some of its temporary reductions permanent. Congress added $20 billion he did not seek for financially strapped states.
_$400 billion over a decade for revamping Medicare and adding prescription drug coverage. Bush last month signed a bill resembling his proposal.
_$87 billion this year for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, $500 million less than he got. The final bill gave him $1.7 billion less than the $18.6 billion he wanted to rebuild Iraq and less flexibility than he wanted for controlling the money.
_Holding Congress' 13 annual spending bills plus the $87 billion war package to a total of $876 billion, according to the House Appropriations Committee. The final bills totaled $873 billion - 3.2 percent over the 2003 total. The bills cover all spending but Social Security and other automatically paid benefits.
_$371.8 billion for the Pentagon spending bill, $3.6 billion more than he got. Lawmakers shifted money from operating accounts to weapons acquisition.
_$28.4 billion for the Homeland Security Department. Congress approved $29.2 billion, adding funds for state and local emergency agencies and port safety.
_$890 million to heighten steps against bioterrorism, which Congress approved.
_Creation of a fund, including $1.3 billion for this year, for countries encouraging democratic institutions. He got $1 billion.
_$2 billion to combat AIDS and other diseases in Africa and the Caribbean. He got $2.4 billion.
_$12.4 billion for low-income school districts and $1 billion for Reading First, part of his "No Child Left Behind" education initiative. He got those amounts. He proposed $9.5 billion for special education and got $10.1 billion.
_$28.6 billion for veterans' health care, to which Congress added $1 billion.
_Holding construction of water projects under $1.4 billion, which Congress pumped up beyond $1.7 billion.
_$29.3 billion for highway projects, to which Congress added $4.5 billion. |
