Shedding its "compassionate conservative" veneer, the White House today acknowledged for the first time that it plans massive cuts to domestic programs in 2006, even as it pushes $1 trillion in new tax cuts. Two weeks after President Bush touted his commitment to education funding, the White House leaked plans to slash $1.5 billion out of the Department of Education – virtually eliminating previous small increases. It would also slash $177 million out of Head Start, the early-childhood education program for the poor. Less than a month after the president bragged about his commitment to funding veterans' health care, the White House is ordering a $910 million cut to the existing veterans' health care budget – a budget the Veterans of Foreign Wars has previously deemed "disgraceful" and "deplorable." The $78 million funding increase that Bush pledged for a homeownership program in 2005 "would be nearly reversed in 2006 with a $53 million cut."
SLASHING 197,500 FROM FOOD AID, GIVING $52,000 TO MILLIONAIRES: Bush has held photo-ops depicting him as committed to helping the poorest of the poor. At one event, he said "I hope people around this country realize that agencies such as this food bank need money." But the White House directive would slash $122 million (2.5%) out of the Women, Infants and Children program which provides food aid to 7.9 million Americans who need it. By simple math, the cut would mean 197,500 people could be slashed from the program – at the very same time the President proposes to give the average millionaire a $52,000 tax cut in 2006.
CUTS ARE CONSISTENT WITH RIGHT-WING RHETORIC: While the new White House budget directive may not be consistent with the President's compassionate conservative rhetoric, it is consistent with other rhetoric from his own administration and conservatives in Congress. For instance, last week, HUD Secretary Alfonso Jackson justified massive cuts to low-income housing by saying, "Being poor is a state of mind, not a condition." And Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), third ranking conservative in the Senate, last year defended cuts to child care and welfare by saying,"Making people struggle a little bit is not necessarily the worst thing." HERITAGE IGNORES THE 800 POUND GORILLA: Heritage Foundation budget analyst Brian Riedl claimed that with the budget deficit exceeding $400 billion, spending cuts must be on the table. What he fails to note is that the president's tax cuts for the wealthy are the single largest factor creating the deficit. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 36% of the budget deterioriation came from tax cuts, while 31% came from spending increases, which were primarily defense and homeland security increases. As an American Progress study shows, non-defense, non-homeland security spending has actually been flat. Riedl says "the public is ready to make sacrifices during the war on terror." What he fails to mention is that every wartime President since the Civil War has asked America to sacrifice by either raising or maintaining tax rates. President Bush, by contrast, is the first commander-in-chief in American history to cut taxes during a war.
