The administration proposes to limit government payments to individual farmers to $250,000, reduce crop and dairy payments by 5 percent, impose a new assessment on sugar growers, and eliminate loopholes that have allowed farmers to evade caps on subsidies.
Officials said that new legislation would be required for some steps, but that the administration could act on its own to block further payments to individuals deemed not to be "actively engaged" in farming.
To end costly bailouts resulting from crop failures, floods and droughts, the administration will seek to require that federally subsidized farmers buy private insurance to cover at least half their losses.
Overall, the Agriculture Department's discretionary budget authority would be trimmed by about $2 billion, or 9.6 percent less than fiscal 2005's $21.4 billion. Cuts would be spread among research, marketing, land acquisition, watershed protection and other accounts.
-- Dan Morgan
The Commerce Department budget's would soar 49 percent, to $9.4 billion, but that is because it would gain control over a host of economic development programs that were run by other departments -- and that would undergo funding cuts of about one-third.
These programs, the biggest of which is HUD's Community Development Block Grants, got about $5.7 billion for 2005. Under Bush's plan, they would be folded into the new "Strengthening America's Communities Grant Program" and funded at $3.7 billion.
Many of Commerce's traditional programs would undergo major cuts. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which got a boost last year, would be cut 8 percent, to $3.584 billion. As in previous budgets, the president is proposing to eliminate the Advanced Technology Program, which helps fund promising technology ventures.
-- Paul Blustein
The fiscal 2006 defense budget of $419.3 billion represents a 4.8 percent increase over fiscal 2005, but is about $3 billion less than projected for fiscal 2006 in last year's plan.
This budget does not include an expected request for $80 billion in supplemental appropriations, including $75 billion to cover military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the current fiscal year.
Highlights include $108.94 billion for military personnel, including a 3.1 percent pay raise for troops and $4.1 billion for Special Operations forces -- boosting their numbers by 1,400.
Procurement funding would decline about 2 percent, to $78 billion. Funding was stepped up for some systems considered important to the military's goal of modernizing: The Army's Future Combat System received $3.4 billion, an increase of $200 million, and the Navy's Littoral Combat Ship gained an increase of $156 million to $613 million. Money would be cut from such weapons systems as the F/A-22 fighters, LPD amphibious ships, and V-22 tilt-rotor aircraft.
-- Ann Scott Tyson
