Kraven Moorehead

Cheney defends cuts in programs
Battle expected for budget trims
By Martin Crutsinger, Associated Press | February 7, 2005

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday defended the administration's budget plan against Democratic criticism that President Bush is seeking steep cuts in scores of federal programs because he is unwilling to roll back first-term tax cuts.

ADVERTISEMENT

The $2.5 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2006 will be submitted to Congress today.

The plan was shaping up as the most austere ever submitted by Bush. It tries to restrain spending across a wide swath of government, including popular farm subsidies, environmental protection, American Indian schools, and Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor and disabled.

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Cheney said the plan will increase the military and homeland security budgets but keep overall spending below next year's expected 2.3 percent inflation rate, in part by eliminating or cutting back on some 150 other programs. "This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here," Cheney said.

"It is a fair, reasonable, responsible, serious piece of effort," he said. "It's not something we have done with a meat ax, nor are we suddenly turning our backs on the most needy people in our society."

The budget's submission will set off months of intense debate. Lawmakers from both parties can be expected to vigorously fight to protect their favorite programs. Opponents have called for at least a partial rollback of Bush's tax cuts, saying they primarily have benefited the wealthy.

The president, who campaigned for reelection on a pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009, is targeting 150 government programs for either outright elimination or sharp cutbacks. During his first term, record federal budget surpluses were replaced by record budget deficits.

The new federal fiscal year begins Oct. 1. For the current year, Bush is estimating the budget deficit will reach a record $427 billion. That compares with last year's $412 billion deficit and is the third straight year the Bush administration will have set, in dollar terms, a deficit record.

The five-year projections in the budget will show the deficit declining to about $230 billion in 2009, when a new president takes office.

However, those projections do not take into account some big-ticket items: the military costs incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, the price of making Bush's first term tax cuts permanent, or the transition costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security.

Senator Kent Conrad, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said Bush's budget "talks about the next five years of reducing deficits, but what that hides is what happens after that five-year window. The cost of everything he advocates explodes."

The administration is expected today to provide estimates of the government borrowing that will be needed for its proposal to allow younger workers to set up private savings accounts. Cheney would not confirm estimates that the overhaul could cost $4.5 trillion in additional government borrowing over 20 years.

Bush's budget will restrain the growth in discretionary programs to less than 2.3 percent. But because defense and homeland security are set for increases above that amount, other programs will see cuts or gains below inflation.

One of the biggest battles is certain to occur in the area of payments and other assistance to farmers, which the administration wants to trim by $587 million in 2006 and by $5.7 billion over the next decade. Those payments go to farmers growing a wide range of crops.

The budget will double the copayment paid by many veterans for prescription drugs and require some to pay a fee of $250 a year to get government health services, The New York Times reported in today's editions. Other programs set for cuts include the Army Corps of Engineers, the Energy Department, and a number of health programs under the Health and Human Services Department.

The administration also will seek to restrain growth in mandatory spending, primarily by trimming costs in Medicaid.