The administration is requesting $56 billion for the Education Department, a cut of a half billion dollars, or 0.9 percent from fiscal 2005 -- the first reduction in overall federal education spending in a decade.
The budget would eliminate the Perkins loan program, which provides low-interest loans to low- and middle-income college students. The budget would use those savings to increase spending on Pell grants, which provide college grants to low-income students, and raise the maximum award $100, to $4,150.
In all, 48 education programs would be terminated, including those providing college-readiness training to low-income high school students and federal vocational education initiatives that the White House said are not performing well or duplicate other federal efforts.
Some of the savings would be used to increase spending in several programs, including $1.5 billion to extend federal No Child Left Behind testing and accountability requirements into the nation's high schools. .
-- Michael A. Fletcher
The Energy Department's budget would fall 2 percent, to $23.4 billion.
Funding would be reduced in a number of areas, including cleanup at the Hanford site in Washington state, which was used for plutonium production. Officials said cleanup is winding down. Also cut would be funding given to oil and gas companies to study more efficient drilling techniques. Officials said the companies could afford to fund their own research.
More money would be spent on Yucca Mountain in Nevada, where the administration wants to create a repository for nuclear waste.
The budget seeks $6.6 billion for the nuclear weapons program, including increases for detection of nuclear materials and acceleration in securing Russian nuclear materials.
-- Justin Blum
Bush is requesting a cut of a half billion dollars for the Environmental Protection Agency, a reduction of 5.6 percent, for a total of $7.6 billion.
The budget calls for a $79 million increase in EPA's homeland security programs, including a project to monitor contamination in select cities, said acting administrator Steve Johnson. It provides $47 million in additional funding to clean up and restore contaminated and abandoned sites.
Cuts include $170 million for water quality protection programs and about $115 million for land preservation and restoration.
-- Shankar Vedantam
