Bush budget: The hits just keep on coming

The main character in the film Groundhog Day is eternally forced to relive the miseries he experiences on one day, Feb. 2 (popularly known as Groundhog Day). So it seems heartbreakingly fitting that the Bush administration chose that day to release its fiscal year 2005 budget - a spending plan sure to keep our nation caught in the cauldron of underfunded domestic programs that grease an overheated agenda of tax cuts for businesses and the wealthiest individuals.

The $2.4 trillion budget proposal aims to make permanent the expiring tax cuts, continue the trend of privatizing services, eliminating or consolidating programs, and providing only modest increases for a handful of nondefense discretionary spending. Education, labor and health programs come up clear losers in the Bush budget plan. While a few programs are slated for increases - Title I, special education and reading programs - they come at the expense of more than 50 programs that are cut, eliminated or level-funded. And, despite the proposed increases, many programs are funded well below what Congress promised.

The budget provides for a 3 percent increase for the Department of Education, the smallest increase in almost a decade. For a look inside the numbers, the AFT legislation department has prepared the following breakdown:

• K-12 education: Programs under the No Child Left Behind Act would receive an increase of 1.8 percent from the previous year. But when all programs under NCLB are tallied together, the proposal provides $9.4 billion less than Congress authorized. The budget proposal axes 38 programs - most notably the Even Start, Comprehensive School Reform and Dropout Prevention programs. Other programs are cut, such as after-school learning initiatives, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, state grants for innovative programs, and safe and drug-free schools.
  
  And a host of other programs, such as after-school and English language acquisition programs, are level-funded - effectively cutting funding since they cannot keep pace with inflation.

• Special education: The administration provides a $1 billion increase for special education programs. However, since its inception in 1975, the program has always been seriously shortchanged. The proposed increase will provide for less than half of the "full funding" Congress committed to when it adopted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) nearly 30 years ago.

• Vouchers: The president's proposal includes a $50 million Choice Incentive Fund that would provide funds to states, school districts and community-based organizations to provide vouchers to allow students to attend public, charter or private schools. This is the administration's attempt to build on its success in getting a voucher program in the District of Columbia. There is also another attempt to double funds for charter schools.

• Higher education: The Pell Grant award remains frozen at a maximum of $4,050, about one-third of the average annual cost of attending college and down from 42 percent in 2001. Other higher education programs see similar patterns. Beginning in 2005, the administration proposes to phase in a revised allocation formula for the federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants, federal Work-Study and federal Perkins Loan programs. There is a $33 million pilot program within the Pell system that rewards students taking Advanced Placement courses with up to an additional $1,000 grant; only 13 states, however, currently participate in this program.

• Vocational education: Much like last year, the administration is aiming to roll back vocational education - a proposed $316 million cut, or 25 percent - and plans to overhaul the program when it is reauthorized. Dubbed Secondary and Technical Education State Grants, voc ed funds would be distributed by states to high schools and community college partners based on "success in achieving improved student outcomes" through a block grant process.

• Early childhood: Most programs are level-funded and would lose ground to inflation. They include school lunch, IDEA preschool grants, TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) and child nutrition programs. Head Start is slated for a slight increase, as are the child care development block grants - but these basically amount to a cost-of-living increase. And because the child care block grants and TANF are basically frozen, 447,000 children will lose child care assistance by 2009. In addition, child care worker loan forgiveness is eliminated, as is the Even Start program.

"Some of the consequences of this budget proposal will mean that 2.4 million children will not get help with reading and math, and 1.3 million children will not have access to promised after-school programs," warns Jodie Fingland, a budget analyst in the AFT legislation department.

Outsourcing America

"When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically." This sentence promoting offshore outsourcing of jobs to countries with cheaper labor was not found in a multinational corporation's prospectus. It was among the Bush administration's prescriptions for improving the U.S. economy, presented to Congress in February in the "2004 Economic Report of the President."

In 400-plus pages, the report addresses a laundry list of some of the nation's most pressing domestic issues, including jobs, healthcare, prescription drugs and entitlement programs. As reported in the Washington Post, the administration's support for outsourcing was amplified by the president's chief economist N. Gregory Mankiw at the release of the annual report. Offshoring of U.S. service jobs is only "the latest manifestation of the gains from trade that economists have talked about" for centuries, he said. "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade." To view the report from the president's Council of Economic Advisers, visit www.gpoaccess.gov/eop/index.html.

The other shoe

Education could be facing even leaner times once the dust of the 2004 election settles, President Bush's latest budget plan indicates. A series of program projections for future fiscal years, included in the administration's budget plan for this year, shows that the White House expects education spending to immediately drop in 2006 and to fall to $63.6 billion in 2007, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports. "That's less than 1 percent above current spending, so with inflation it would represent a decrease," the paper observes. "It's also 4 percent less than Bush's much-touted increase for [fiscal year] 2005."

The Washington, D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute (EPI) has blasted the budget as bait-and-switch politics tailored to an election year. There is "a pattern in the budget numbers where the appearance of increases is contradicted by the reality of long-term budget averages. In particular, the administration asks for immediate increases in politically sensitive spending, while at the same time reducing subsequent spending that undercuts its commitments for 2005," EPI warns. And even the "good news" figures for fiscal year 2005 are anything but - 38 education programs would be "zeroed out" in that year, the AFT points out.