Related Items Full Coverage: White House Releases New Budget

Tuesday, February 2, 1999; Page A13

The fiscal 2000 budget plan that President Clinton sent to Congress yesterday calls for spending about $1.77 trillion and collecting $1.88 trillion in revenue. The budget provides for a surplus of $117.3 billion, the second year in a row that the budget is in the black.

The president's proposal calls for setting aside the $117.3 billion as a "reserve pending Social Security reform."

The percentage increase or decrease for each agency listed below is based on mandatory and discretionary outlays--the amount of money the government proposes to actually spend in the fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

The agencies themselves generally discuss their funding in terms of budget authority, the amount of money that the law allows the government to commit to be spent in either the current fiscal year or future years. The funds discussed below are in outlays unless otherwise specified. How each agency would be affected:

Agriculture: Nutrition Tops Menu

13.0%

The Department of Agriculture expects to spend $55 billion in fiscal 2000, with the largest increases coming in nutrition programs--especially for school breakfasts and lunches--and crop insurance.

Although the budget is down sharply from fiscal 1999's $63 billion, the current year's outlays had risen dramatically with a $6 billion payout in emergency disaster relief to hard-hit farmers. To head off future disaster megapayments, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman made crop insurance reform his top priority, and called on Congress to "work closely" to develop a plan by October.

Without reform, USDA projected crop insurance outlays at $1.6 billion, up $300 million from fiscal 1999. Glickman acknowledged reform "will not be cheap," but predicted it would cost "nowhere near" last year's emergency payments of $6 billion.

Food and nutrition, the largest single set of programs within USDA, will grow by $900 million, to $36 billion, in 2000.

– Guy Gugliotta, The Washington Post

Commerce: A Census-Driven Increase

39.4%

The cost of conducting the year 2000 census is the main item driving a 39 percent increase in the Commerce Department's proposed budget, which would rise to $6.6 billion under Clinton's plan.

Budget authority for the census would increase a whopping 129 percent, to $3.07 billion, with full-time equivalent employment more than tripling, to 64,208. And that's without taking into account the recent Supreme Court decision barring the Census Bureau from using sampling for purposes of apportionment.

"Without sampling, we will need to hire more people, [and] the budget will be bigger," Deputy Secretary Robert Mallett told a news conference, noting that the bureau is drafting a new spending plan to reflect the requirements of the court ruling.

Also slated for a hefty increase is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, where the president is proposing a 13 percent boost in budget authority, to $2.48 billion, partly to fund programs to protect at-risk species such as Pacific salmon.

The administration is seeking $239 million, an 18 percent boost, for the Advanced Technology Program, which promotes research and development partnerships with industry. Congress has repeatedly cut the program, contending it amounts to government choosing winners and losers among promising technologies.

– Paul Blustein, The Washington Post

Defense: More Purchasing Power

1.0%

While Defense Department outlays under the president's proposal would decrease slightly over fiscal 1999, the Pentagon's budget authority would increase $4.6 billion, to $267.2 billion, and go up even more substantially over the following five years, marking the first sustained increase in military spending in 15 years.

Compared to what the administration had been planning to allot to defense just a year ago, the new proposal represents an increase in Pentagon purchasing power of $12.6 billion in fiscal 2000 and $112 billion through fiscal 2005, defense officials said.

Coming in response to complaints from military chiefs that post-Cold War budget cuts and a rise in overseas operations have damaged military readiness, the money would go toward boosting pay and benefits for soldiers, alleviating shortages of spare parts and financing operations in Bosnia and the Persian Gulf.

– Bradley Graham, The Washington Post

• Cohen Cautions Hill on Military Pay Hike (The Post)
• New Funds, Same Priorities (LEGI-SLATE News Service)

Education: After-School Aid Tripling

2.0%

The nation's schools would receive a 2 percent budget increase, taking the Education Department's overall budget outlays to $34.97 billion in fiscal 2000.

The spending plan proposes tripling, to $600 million, the amount of money for after-school programs. Paired with matching funds, that would allow 2,500 districts to provide academic and recreational services to 1.1 million students.

The budget also proposes spending $190 million on adult education programs that teach reading to the undereducated and English to immigrants. Clinton added $200 million for the second phase of his plan to hire 100,000 new teachers over seven years.

Included in the budget is a new $50 million program to help school districts educate young students with reading or behavioral problems. It also calls for $461 million to help districts implement tougher standards as well as new money for charter schools and for computers.

– Michael Fletcher, The Washington Post

• Plan Irks GOP, Sets Stage for Rematch (LEGI-SLATE News Service)

Energy: National Security Beefed Up

1.0%

At first glance, it looks as if spending for the Department of Energy is flat, with outlays up only 1 percent, to $15.756 billion in fiscal 2000. But Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said DOE's budget for continuing operations is up 4.1 percent. The current budget included $525 million in one-time emergency funding to buy highly enriched uranium from Russia and for plutonium disposition there.

Richardson said that national security is "a major, major priority of mine," and the budget includes a $244 million increase, to $6.2 billion, for DOE's national security mission, which includes running lab experiments and computer simulations to ensure the safety and reliability--without nuclear testing--of the nuclear weapons stockpile.

DOE also created a new office to oversee counterintelligence in DOE labs, headed by Edward Curran, a former career FBI agent.

– Martha M. Hamilton, The Washington Post

EPA: Bonds for Curbing Sprawl

10.2%

The Environmental Protection Agency budget proposes a $9.5 billion, five-year credit program to help communities combat urban sprawl.

With EPA's approval, states and local communities would issue "Better America Bonds" to acquire land, set up parks and greenbelts, protect water and farmland, and attack traffic congestion. Bond purchasers would get tax credits totaling $700 million, enabling communities to issue the bonds at zero interest. The initiative has no impact on EPA's budget because it would be financed through reduced federal tax revenue.

The agency seeks new budget authority of $7.4 billion for fiscal 2000, almost $200 million less than this year.

– Dan Morgan, The Washington Post

• A Focus on Less Controversial Programs (LEGI-SLATE News Service)

HHS: Insurance, Medicare Options

6.6%

The proposed budget for the Department of Health and Human Services would offer new insurance options to hundreds of thousands of Americans aged 55 to 65 and enable more Medicare recipients to receive promising cancer treatments. Medicare would spend more than $217 billion on benefits and administration, compared with $205 billion in 1999.

Among new or augmented programs, HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala cited a long-term care initiative to help 2 million elderly and disabled Americans and a plan to increase working parents' access to child care by offering a $6.3 billion tax credit over five years.

The Food and Drug Administration would get a boost of 19 percent, to $1.35 billion, the largest increase in two decades. The National Institutes of Health would get $320 million more to help fight such diseases as Alzheimer's and AIDS.

– William Branigin, The Washington Post

• Long-Term Care Tax Cuts, Boosts for Medicare (LEGI-SLATE News Service)

HUD: Rental Assistance Boost

0.6%

The Department of Housing and Urban Development would renew all of the nation's 3.1 million rental assistance contracts and add another 100,000 new rental assistance vouchers to help poor families afford decent housing in next year's budget. More than half would be set aside for the elderly, homeless and those leaving welfare for work. The remaining 42,000 would be distributed to housing authorities across the nation to help 5.3 million families with urgent housing needs.

The HUD budget, which would edge up only slightly in outlays, would rise about 10 percent in authorization for future spending. HUD proposed a domestic version of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. The new America's Private Investment Companies would make investments in businesses that are expanding or relocating in distressed areas. The goal is to use only $37 million in credit subsidies to make about $1.5 billion available for inner-city investment that could create about 200,000 jobs.

– Judith Havemann, The Washington Post

Interior: Big Land Purchases Planned

0.5%

The Interior Department's proposed budget contains only a slight increase in overall spending, to a total of $8.47 billion, but several programs are earmarked for significant increases in budget authority.

These include a $354 million increase in Interior's share of the Lands Legacy Initiative, including $295 million for land acquisitions targeted at five major areas: the California desert, Civil War battlefields, the Everglades, areas along the Lewis and Clark Trail and the forests of Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire. The battlefields initiative includes $5.7 million to acquire three parcels of land at Gettysburg, including one that is the site of a privately owned, 310-foot tower that the National Park Service plans to dismantle.

Interior's budget also calls for an increase of $156 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

– Edward Walsh, The Washington Post

Justice: Funds Aimed at Communities

20.0%

The Justice Department budget totaled $21 billion in budget authority for fiscal 2000, including funds for a new community policing initiative, enhanced protection for abortion clinics and an expanded program to combat high-tech terrorism and computer crimes.

Justice announced $1.28 billion to hire and train as many as 50,000 new officers for police departments across the country over the next five years. About $4.5 million is included for security assessments and improvements for reproductive health care clinics.

A $122.5 million program to protect the nation's information infrastructure from cyber attacks includes the hiring of 55 additional federal prosecutors nationwide and nine top supervisors at headquarters.

– Roberto Suro, The Washington Post

Labor: Mandatory Spending Boosts

10.7%

The Labor Department has proposed increasing budget outlays for fiscal 2000 from $34.9 billion to $38.7 billion, with most of the increase involving mandatory spending programs.

The department proposed discretionary spending of $4 million to help employers assess their pay policies as part of Clinton's equal pay initiative and $29 million for the International Labor Organization to help establish worldwide labor standards.

The biggest discretionary spending proposal was $369 million for what the department called the Universal Reemployment Initiative, a five-year program to help provide training for dislocated workers--workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

– Frank Swoboda, The Washington Post

State: Security, Peace Initiatives

2.5%

The president's budget asks for $21.3 billion for international affairs, up from the $19.6 billion initially requested for fiscal 1999, but slightly less than the $21.6 billion that Congress appropriated after including emergency supplementals and arrears payments to the United Nations and multilateral banks.

The pie divides differently this year to reflect last year's traumas and successes. To boost embassy security in light of what Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright called "the tragic lessons this past August in Kenya and Tanzania," the budget asks for $304 million to upgrade defenses against terrorism. Clinton is asking for another $3 billion as an advance on fiscal 2001 for embassy security.

The budget asks for money to support incipient peace deals from Bosnia to Northern Ireland to the Middle East. The largest request is $500 million--and another $900 million for the current year--to implement the Wye River peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

– Barton Gellman, The Washington Post

• Embassy Bombings Prompt Security Hikes (The Post)
• Tackling Security Concerns (LEGI-SLATE News Service)

Transportation: Highway Spending Hike

8.7%

The fiscal 2000 budget for transportation reflects a general increase for most transportation modes, with a hefty boost for highway spending, which would jump to $28.54 billion from $27.36 billion.

While Federal Aviation Administration spending would rise to $10.13 billion from $9.75 billion, the airport grant portion would drop to $1.6 billion from $1.95 billion. The administration would allow airports to raise money by increasing the maximum $3 passenger facility charge to $5.

Mass transit spending would be increased, with the Federal Transit Administration's budget rising to $6.1 billion from $5.4 billion. And Amtrak received its requested $571 million budget, one of the few years the administration has not recommended cuts for the railroad.

– Don Phillips, The Washington Post

Treasury: Debt Relief Yields a Decrease

2.1%

The 2.1 percent drop in Treasury's budget reflects the effect of the reduction in the amount Treasury must pay in interest on the national debt. As the nation enters a new era of surpluses and gradually begins retiring a portion of the debt, the cost of servicing that debt will drop.

In its own $12.5 billion operating budget, Treasury is focusing on improving performance and efficiency in agencies such as the Internal Revenue Service, which is undergoing reorganization mandated by last year's IRS reform legislation.

– George Hager, The Washington Post

Veterans Affairs: New Medical Care Programs

1.1%

The Department of Veterans Affairs will attempt to open new outpatient facilities and administer new medical programs with a proposed budget of $44 billion that has remained largely unchanged since the administration's 1997 balanced-budget plan.

The VA budget includes $18 billion in discretionary funds for medical care, including $250 million to cover a stepped-up program to combat hepatitis C as well as $50 million to aid homeless veterans and $106 million for alternative long-term care programs such as home health care. The budget also includes a proposal to allow payments for emergency care for certain veterans at non-VA hospitals and renews a request to allow the VA to collect Medicare payments for services provided to certain veterans.

– Ben White, The Washington Post