President Bush’s plan to abolish, slash or merge more than 150 programs at a savings of almost $30 billion next year is getting cheers from big-spending critics, though some wish his budget had cut deeper.
The larger-than-expected list of program terminations, consolidations and cuts is more than just a rundown of programs and their costs. Each proposal is accompanied by a detailed brief describing why the program should be eliminated or reduced, which budget-cutting advocates say is similar to President Reagan’s efforts to shrink the size of government in the 1980s.
“This is the $30 billion in terminations and reductions that conservatives have been waiting for since President Bush took office in 2001,” said Brian Riedl, chief budget analyst at the Heritage Foundation. “Overall, it’s a strong list of program terminations. The fact that the president went after 150 is more than is typically expected from any president. It’s rare for a president to advocate terminating so many programs.”
Even hard-core budget cutters at the Cato Institute, who would like to see major sectors of the government closed down, were impressed.
“These are programs like Amtrak, agricultural subsidies and the like that conservatives have been trying to get rid of for years. So it is certainly heartening to see them trying to line up all of these programs in one place and pick them off,” said Stephen Slivinski, director of budget studies at the Cato Institute.
What surprised Heritage spending critics, who have been critical of Mr. Bush for sharply increasing federal spending in his first term, was the wide range of cuts that amounted to much more in dollar savings than the $15 billion or so initially anticipated.
The proposed program eliminations and cuts would slice $22 billion in discretionary spending and $7.4 billion in mandatory or entitlement spending. But because many of the savings were transferred to higher-priority programs, the net decrease in spending is closer to $20 billion, Heritage budget analysts said.
In discretionary spending alone, which unlike automatic entitlement programs such as Medicare must be appropriated each year, Mr. Bush would eliminate 99 programs for a savings of $8.8 billion in 2006 and reduce spending in 55 programs for a savings of $6.5 billion. Among the biggest program terminations and cuts:
• Ending the annual federal subsidy for Amtrak, the government’s rail passenger service, for a savings of $847 million.
• Terminating NASA’s Hubble space telescope for a savings of $291 million.
• Reducing agricultural subsidies and other farm programs for a savings of $2.47 billion.
• Cutting the Justice Department’s Federal Bureau of Prisons construction program, saving $333 million.
• Cuts in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant program and 17 other similar grant-making agencies, whose funds often go to communities that are not needy, would save $1.6 billion.
As welcome as the cuts were to many conservatives, they were seen as inadequate by some in a government whose spending has risen by nearly 40 percent since Mr. Bush took office.
“My concern is that this is really just small potatoes. I mean, you think of 150 programs in a budget that’s going to cost $2.6 trillion and that funds thousands of programs every year, 150 really is just a sliver of a sliver,” Mr. Slivinski said.
The big question for spending critics is how tough the president will be in enforcing his budget requests and whether he will use his veto power.
White House budget director Joshua B. Bolten said the president could threaten a veto as he did last year against the highway spending bill that exceeded his budget request. The bill subsequently was killed in conference.
The Office of Management and Budget said its list of program eliminations and budget reductions was the result of the Program Assessment Rating Tool “designed to help assess the management and performance of government programs.”
The administration has evaluated 607 programs during the past three years and to date has found that 15 percent of them were effective, 26 percent were moderately effective, 26 percent were adequate, 4 percent were ineffective, and 29 percent were rated “results not demonstrated.”
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