Then came February, and things only got worse. Bush’s FY 2007 budget proposal, released Feb. 6, includes cuts of draconian proportions,  says AFT president Edward J. McElroy.  A few days later came the House Republicans’ vote for John Boehner (R-Ohio) as their new majority leader, replacing Tom DeLay. Boehner’s chairmanship of the House Education and the Workforce Committee then went to Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon (R-Calif.). McKeon’s record as an accountability hawk and a needs-based aid opponent bodes poorly for the Higher Education Act, which the committee is shepherding through reauthorization this year.

The glimmer of good news is that Congress just barely approved the 2006 budget; it squeaked by with a 216 to 214 vote in the House of Representatives, where all Democrats and 13 moderate Republicans voted against it. (As this newspaper went to press, there was a question of whether a clerk’s error might have compromised the constitutionality of the vote. The final resolution of the matter is up in the air.) The Senate almost prevented it from passing as well—Vice President Richard Cheney cast the tie-breaking vote.

The fact that it did pass, however, means more than $39 billion has been sliced away from domestic programs, and student loan programs took the biggest hit. Some $12 billion was slashed from student loans, resulting in an average increase of $5,800 in the interest students pay on loans.

The budget also reduced Medicaid by $10.5 billion over five years, resulting in higher copayments and reduced prescription drug assistance; and it established higher premiums for Medicare. At the same time, HMOs participating in Medicare got a formula change that is, in essence, a windfall of $22 billion. This budget, says McElroy, “punishes low- and middle-income college students, poor children, the elderly and the disabled, yet provides handouts to the healthcare industry and another round of tax cuts that will bloat the already out-of-control deficit.”

President Bush’s State of the Union address was less dramatic, but what it didn’t say echoed loudly for those hoping for substance and vision. For example, Bush proposed training 70,000 teachers to teach  Advanced Placement courses in math and science, and to bring 30,000 math and science professionals into classrooms, but did not say how to pay for them.

Finally, Bush’s new budget proposal falls far short of the president’s State of the Union urge toward competitiveness, by slashing the very education programs that could boost America’s success. One in three programs on the chopping block is in education.

The president’s pretend increase in Pell Grants is canceled out by eliminating Perkins loans, which this year provided $1.3 billion for vocational and technical education to low-income students. And the administration is advertising the Pell Grants arrangement as an increase, when the merit-based “increases”—given to those who graduate from “rigorous” high school curriculums, keep a 3.0 GPA and study in-demand subjects like math and science—could have been translated instead to across-the-board increases for all recipients of this originally need-based grant.

Says McElroy, this budget is a “huge reversal in the federal government’s commitment to education at a time when new, rigorous requirements for students and teachers need to be met.”

The AFT will work hard to push Congress toward wiser policies as it moves through budget approval. After such a close vote on the last budget, there’s a good chance that this time, we’ll win.