White House set to propose lean budget

The fiscal 2006 federal budget President Bush will formally propose next month is likely to be the most austere in years, and will recommend eliminating funding for poor-performing programs, according to Bush administration officials.

Bush has promised to halve the deficit by 2009. "We'll send a tough budget up, that really says to the American people: 'We're going to be wise about how we spend your money," he said in an interview with USA Today last week. "And part of being wise about how we spend your money is, we're not going to increase money on programs that aren't working. We're results-oriented people."

Some programs "won't be getting any money at all" if the White House has any say, the president added.

Based on preliminary figures published by the Office of Management and Budget last year, George Krumbhaar, a longtime congressional staffer now working as a private consultant, projects that more than half of nondefense discretionary programs will see proposed funding cuts in fiscal 2006, nearly double the average in recent years.

The cuts will come on top of a tough fiscal 2005 budget that held government programs outside of homeland security and defense to an average 1 percent increase. Congress froze funding for grants to college students and reduced outlays for programs that help localities hire police officers and maintain sewer systems. The National Science Foundation incurred the largest budget cut in its history-$105 million below the fiscal 2004 level. Research grants and science education funding were slashed by $30 million. The Housing and Urban Development Department saw cuts in programs for maintaining public housing and providing down-payment assistance to low-income workers and aid to the homeless and people with AIDS. The Transportation Department's budget declined by 5 percent.

Clay Johnson, OMB's deputy director for management, said the Bush administration must demonstrate even more budgetary resolve in the coming years. "There are a lot of questions about whether this administration is disciplined enough to take more fiscally responsible acts in the way we budget and spend money," he said. "It's very important that we show we can be disciplined."

Outside of defense and homeland security, the rate of increase in government spending has steadily declined, from 6 percent in 2002--President Bush's first budget--to this year's 1 percent level. Overall, though, discretionary spending rose at a rate greater than 10 percent from 2002 to 2004.

With the budget deficit hitting an all-time high of $413 billion in 2004, the administration will place increasing pressure on congressional appropriators to consider analyses of program performance in making spending decisions. "We tend to get better when money is tight," Johnson said. Lawmakers are growing more familiar with formal program evaluations the White House has published as part of the president's budget request for the past three years, said Robert Shea, head of OMB's performance and budget integration initiative, in a recent interview. But there is still a "long way to go before [the evaluations] are as much a factor" in the legislative branch as they are in the executive branch, he acknowledged.

In the fiscal 2005 omnibus appropriations package passed late last year, Congress funded all but one of 13 programs that President Bush proposed eliminating because OMB evaluators had concluded they were ineffective or could not demonstrate they were achieving intended results. Two of the 13 programs received budget increases.

Only one program the administration had targeted for elimination--a Small Business Administration effort to provide startup companies with technology and reference materials--actually was canceled. It had received $14 million in fiscal 2004, but earned a "results not demonstrated" rating on OMB's evaluation.

While lawmakers aren't under any obligation to follow President Bush's recommendations, the administration would like to see "some action" to address concerns raised in performance evaluations, Shea said. OMB will continue providing information on its Program Assessment Rating Tool-the questionnaire used to grade programs-to members of Congress in the hope that the evaluations will get more attention in the fiscal 2006 budget cycle, he said.

By the time the fiscal 2006 budget is unveiled early next month, the administration will have rated 60 percent of major government programs. OMB plans to evaluate all major programs by fiscal 2008.

Even if Congress ends up funding programs that Bush suggests eliminating, the PART evaluations are valuable, said Rep. Todd Platts, R-Pa. The assessments aren't simply geared toward identifying programs that could be consolidated or cut, he said; they help agencies use existing resources more efficiently.