Federal land conservation and environmental programs would bear the brunt of budget cuts next year under budget limits sent to the House Appropriations Committee's spending panels yesterday.
After months of debate over the broad terms of the fiscal 2006 budget, the new allocations spell out more specifically what programs would be cut and which would be increased when the House Appropriations Committee takes up its 11 discretionary spending bills. Among the winners are Congress itself, which would receive a 4.9 percent increase, the third largest after the allocations for a cluster of departments including Transportation, Treasury and Housing, and another group of programs for veterans and military quality of life.
The Senate Appropriations Committee will follow with its allocations, probably next week, a committee spokeswoman said.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.) restored some of the money that President Bush would have cut from domestic programs by holding down Bush's requested increases in defense spending and foreign aid. Under Lewis's allocations, defense spending will rise by $11 billion over this year, but that is $3.3 billion less than Bush wanted.
Foreign operations would increase by $726 million in 2006, well short of the $3.3 billion increase proposed by the White House.
But the domestic allocations will still be tough, Democratic and Republican appropriations aides said.
"This will be a difficult budget year," Lewis said.
Agriculture programs would receive the same amount of money -- $16.8 billion -- that they received this year, a cut in inflation-adjusted terms.
Energy and water programs would be reduced by $100 million from 2005 levels.
The Interior Department and other environmental programs would be cut below current levels by 2.2 percent, or $595 million. Aides said the Environmental Protection Agency, especially its clean water grant program, is in the most trouble.
Although the cut would be 0.1 percent, the biggest legislative battle probably will come over the allocation for the departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education. In past years, modest increases have spawned intraparty brawls in the GOP. This year, those politically popular programs are in for a $163 million decrease.
Because both parties have said they would increase spending on some programs, such as medical research, Pell grants, special education and educational aid to poor school districts, other programs will have to be cut significantly. Bush has already put several on the block, including low-income heating assistance, vocational education, safe and drug-free schools, and school reform programs.
The Republican-controlled Appropriations Committee did signal it would not go along with one of Bush's highest profile cuts.
The president proposed consolidating 18 economic and community development programs from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and four other agencies into a single grant program at the Commerce Department. Programs with combined budgets totaling nearly $5.7 billion would be shoehorned into a $3.7 billion package, with the steepest cut going to the popular community development block grant.
But the committee's allocations assume no such consolidation.
