Bush Unveils $2.4 Trillion Budget

As previously announced, Bush's budget proposes an ambitious program to return Americans to the moon as early as 2015 and eventually send a mission to Mars. However, the budget only contains $1 billion in new money for the effort over the next five years with another $11 billion reallocated from current NASA programs. In 2005, Bush proposes increasing NASA's budget by 6 percent to $16.2 billion.

Other programs that would receive boosts in Bush's budget include his No Child Left Behind education program; job training programs, including one that links community colleges with employers' and an $18 million increase for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Bush's budget proposes to hold the spending increase for all of the government's discretionary programs - those other than entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare - to 3.9 percent in 2005. That average rise includes big boosts for the military and homeland security.

Scores of government programs outside those two areas will be restrained to an overall increase of just 0.5 percent, below the rise in inflation, and some agencies will suffer outright cuts.

The budget calls for outright spending cuts in seven of 16 Cabinet-level agencies.

The Agriculture Department's budget authority for 2005 would be reduced to 8.1 percent while EPA's budget would be cut by 7.2 percent. The departments of Commerce, Health and Human Services, Justice, Transportation and Treasury would also see their funding for discretionary programs decrease in 2005 under Bush's spending plan.