The administration had made a big play for a $490 million budget increase, arguing the money was necessary to boost tax law enforcement in the face of a widening gap between taxes owed and taxes paid. The IRS's independent oversight board dismissed the increase as insufficient. But Congress ultimately gave Bush only $134 million of the $490 million increase he was seeking.
The Labor Department received a 5.1 percent increase in its budget over last year, increasing its budget from $11.7 billion to $12.3 billion.
The Contributors
Contributing to this report were staff writers Justin Blum, Ceci Connolly, Michael Dobbs, Dan Eggen, Brian Faler, Sara Kehaulani Goo, Guy Gugliotta, Amy Joyce, Glenn Kessler, Christopher Lee, John Mintz, Dan Morgan, Thomas E. Ricks, Judy Sarasohn, Shankar Vedantam and Jonathan Weisman.
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Friday's Question:
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The budget fully funded Bush's $250 million community college-based training program that will train workers for high-growth industries by funding partnerships with employers and community colleges. It also includes $1.48 billion for dislocated workers, an increase of $25 million over 2004, and $96.3 million more than the Bush administration requested. States will use the money to help workers affected by mass layoffs or plant closures.
The nation's job training programs received $5.4 billion, an increase of $216 million from 2004. The bill kept youth training at its same amount of $994 million and increased ex-offender program funding to $70 million from $50 million. The Job Corps program received a 1.2 percent increase over last year, receiving $1.56 billion compared with $1.54 billion. The administration wanted to cut employment service grants to states by $90.9 million, but it received the same amount as in fiscal 2004.
DEFENSE
With the military fighting a war in Iraq and continuing to operate in Afghanistan, the Defense Department budget has been going through the roof. Congress approved a separate defense appropriations measure of $416.2 billion for fiscal 2005, slightly below the administration's amended request.
That includes $25 billion in emergency spending already approved, but doesn't count another big supplement of about $70 billion that is being prepared now for submission in January.
Excluding supplementals, the 2005 figure represents an increase of $23.8 billion over the previous year's spending.
The budget funds the first deployment of a national missile defense system, at a cost of $10 billion. It also increased by $1.5 billion the administration's request for spending on ground combat systems, such as tanks, trucks and Humvees, whose usable lives are being cut drastically by heavy use in hot, dusty conditions in Iraq. Among other ground systems, it provided $625 million to field an additional brigade of the Stryker wheeled armored vehicle, which has surprised skeptics by working well in Iraq.
Aviation, as always, took a big bite of the budget, with, among other things, the Navy receiving $2.9 billion for 42 F/A-18 fighters and the Air Force receiving $3.6 billion for procurement of 24 F-22 fighters and $2.7 billion for 15 C-17 cargo planes. Another major item is $4.4 billion for the multi-service Joint Strike Fighter.
The Navy also received $11.1 billion for its shipbuilding programs.
The omnibus spending bill increased spending on the Department of Veterans Affairs to $65.9 billion, which is $4.3 billion more than the previous year and $1.2 billion more than the administration requested.
Most of the department's funding goes to mandatory spending for entitlement programs, such as disability and pension payments to veterans.
EDUCATION
Congress approved the smallest budget increase in nearly a decade for the Department of Education. The total discretionary budget of $56.6 billion is up $916 million, or 1.6 percent, on 2004 levels, but falls $760 million short of the funding level Bush requested.
Funding for educationally disadvantaged children under the No Child Left Behind program, the administration's landmark education reform effort, increased by $400 million to $12.74 billion, which is $600 million short of the president's request. Special-education funding increased by $520 million to $10.07 billion, $480 million short of the administration's request.
Lawmakers did not fund several programs Bush embraced during the election campaign, including $40 million for an adjunct teacher corps and $33 million for grants for low-income college students who took rigorous courses in high school. Several programs the White House had targeted for extinction -- including dropout prevention and school counseling -- were preserved in the final budget.
