President Bush's budget plan calls for elimination or drastic reduction 68 federal programs that he has never targeted before, including vocational-education grants, emergency medical services for children and assistance to local law enforcement agencies, according to a list the White House released yesterday.
The 68 programs are among 154 the Bush administration singled out for termination or major reduction to help restrain spending in the $2.57 trillion budget for fiscal 2006 he sent to Congress on Monday. Many of the 154 were recycled from previous budgets that Congress rejected before and they are unlikely to be accepted this year either.
 
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But Bush went beyond the perennial cuts to take aim at a range of other federal services that for the first time he deemed ineffective or inessential, focusing mainly on education, health, social services and law enforcement. The 68 new targets will help shape the contours of the budget battle set to begin on Capitol Hill as lawmakers from both parties prepare to pick apart the Bush plan and rally behind favored programs.
The White House released the list of program cuts in response to congressional requests, sending it to lawmakers late on a Friday afternoon, when it would receive relatively little attention heading into the weekend.
The timing underscored the political calculations involved as Bush attempts to fulfill his vow to cut the federal deficit in half by 2009 while still paying for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and financing his ambitious proposal to restructure Social Security. While it may be politically advantageous to announce that 154 programs would be eliminated or reduced, it becomes far dicier on Capitol Hill once they are identified.
"Given the impact of these cuts on average American working families, it is no surprise that the administration would want to hide them in the dark by slipping them under the door after the sun has gone down," said Rep. David R. Obey (Wis.), the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.
The list of targeted programs is part of a 233-page report that also discusses savings in mandatory social programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, military restructuring and new user fees. Much attention has focused on the program cuts because they fall within the discretionary portion of the budget that the White House and Congress control, and the report attempts to provide detailed justifications for each cut.
All told, Bush wants to eliminate 99 programs, reduce 55 and restructure 16, for a total annual savings of $20 billion. After the cost of revisions, the net savings would be $17.2 billion, according to the report. The target list stemmed from an administration evaluation of more than 600 programs, of which 33 percent were determined to be ineffective or to have undemonstrated results.
"What you have is a who's-who list of federal programs that either don't work well, do exactly the same thing as other federal programs or just aren't essential priorities in the period we're living in," said Chad Kolton, a spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget.
The programs proposed for elimination include big-ticket items, such as $1.2 billion for vocational education, as well as smaller services, such as the National Youth Sports Program, an $18 million effort that has provided athletics for low-income children for more than three decades. Grants for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools program, totaling $437 million, "are spread too thinly to support quality interventions," the report said, and would be zeroed out.
The White House targeted a $41 million college scholarship program named for one of Bush's most persistent critics, Sen. Robert C. Byrd (D-W.Va.). But even the president's own past priorities were not sacrosanct -- $496 million in education technology grants created by Bush's No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 would be wiped out because, the report said, "it is not clear that [it] has been successful in accomplishing this mission."
The vocational money and other cut education funding would be reprogrammed to help extend the No Child Left Behind accountability system to the high school level, a move that drew criticism from education advocates. "It doesn't seem a fair trade," said Michael Pons, a spokesman for the National Education Association. "It's just very shortsighted to us."
Health and Human Services programs would face significant cuts. The Bush plan would kill seven Health Resources and Services Administration programs that earmark money for emergency medical services for children, hospital construction, traumatic brain injury and newborn hearing screening. Despite the national rise in child obesity, the White House wants to eliminate a $59 million media campaign to encourage children ages 9 to 13 to be more physically active, judging it redundant given similar drives by Nickelodeon and the Disney Channel.
Bush also deemed unnecessary a $6 million 10-year-old program that helps timber workers in the Northwest earn a living as logging opportunities decline and a $10 million four-year-old program that helps rural communities buy fire engines.
Among the biggest programs that would be shuttered is the Byrne Justice Assistance Grants, a $626 million effort created last year to help state and local police fight violent and drug-related crime. The White House argued that it should be closed since crime is in decline and the program's importance pales in comparison with "increasing federal counterterrorism efforts and reducing the federal deficit."
Staff writer Dan Morgan contributed to this report.
