More lack of respect

[pecunium]

The Bush Budget is more telling for what it doesn't include, than for what it does.

I am not talking about the cuts, rather I am discussing the unwillingness of the adminstration to show what they project for any year past this one.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has a breakdown on this. Some details.

One unusual aspect of this budget is the omission of information about how these cuts would affect particular programs. The budget fails to provide proposed funding levels for individual appropriated programs for years after 2006 — the first time since 1989 that an Administration’s budget has lacked this type of information. As a consequence, the published, widely available budget documents released by the Administration on February 7 provide programmatic details on how the Administration would achieve only the first $18 billion of these cuts, the reductions that would occur in 2006. Some $196 billion in domestic cuts — all of the reductions in years 2007 through 2010 — are left unidentified.

This is either a lack of faith in the American people (that they won't see how needful these, well thought out cuts are) or, misdirection and prevarication, hiding the real cuts and costs because they know they won't be well recieved.

As a group, veterans’ programs would be cut by 16 percent by 2010. These include programs that provide health care to veterans.

Natural resource and environmental programs would be cut by 23 percent, or nearly one-fourth. Falling within this group are programs that protect the environment, as well as the funding that supports the national parks.

Agriculture programs would be cut by 17 percent. This includes agricultural research programs and animal and plant health inspection.

Education and workforce development programs would be cut by 15 percent. These include employment and training programs, community college funding, and federal funding for K-12 education.
Health programs would be reduced by 14 percent. These include medical research, community health centers, and HIV/AIDS treatment funds.

Income security programs would be cut by 11 percent. A wide range of programs are contained within this overall category, such as housing assistance programs, some child care assistance, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC).

While the backup materials show that the cuts would be both large and widespread, these materials do not answer the basic question of which programs would be cut and by how much to achieve the overall level of savings in these program areas that the budget calls for. What makes this omission particularly troubling is that the Administration is also proposing to set statutory limits on overall discretionary spending — called “discretionary caps” — for each of the next five years. The annual caps would be set at levels equal to the total amount that the President’s budget requests for discretionary programs in each of these next five years. If these caps are established and Defense Department, homeland security and international affairs programs are funded at the levels the budget proposes, then domestic programs funded through the appropriations process will have to be cut by $214 billion over these years, and by $66 billion in 2010 alone.[1]

Worse is the permanence with which these, invisible, cuts are being structured. The way it's written the cuts are mandated. Without specific legislation it would be illegal for Congress to not make the cuts (which, as you will recall have not been disclosed).

Which also means this administration is hamstringing the one which follows. No way for that one (for the same reason Congress can't) to change the budget trajectory they are trying to establish.

The Executive branch is trying to take over the legislative, and (with things like excluding the courts from the review of legislation) parts of the judiciary.