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Bush budget big on domestic security

US President George W. Bush proposed a US$2.4 trillion budget for next year on Monday, declaring that his spending blueprint had three paramount goals: "winning the war on terror, protecting the homeland, and strengthening the economy."

The budget for the fiscal year that begins on Oct. 1 calls for a 7 percent increase in military spending (but does not specifically provide for the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan), a 10 percent increase in domestic security spending and a hold-the-line increase of just one-half percent for a vast array of domestic programs.

Bush, commenting after a Cabinet meeting on Monday, said his budget "sets clear priorities: winning the war on terror, protecting our homeland, making sure our children get educated, making sure the seniors get a modern Medicare system."

"And at the same time," he added, "we're calling upon Congress to be wise with the taxpayers' money."

About half the government's Cabinet-level agencies would get less money next year, with the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency apparently in line for the biggest cuts. Any cuts in environmental-agency spending are certain to touch off debate on Capitol Hill.

Copies of the budget, whose bound volumes are about the size of several metropolitan telephone directories, were ceremoniously trucked Monday morning to Capitol Hill, where they were received by Representative Jim Nussle, the Republican who heads the House Budget Committee.

In sending the budget to Capitol Hill, Bush was offering a political statement as much as a spending plan. Every president's proposed budget is also a political document, and that is especially true this election year, when all the seats in the House of Representatives and one in three in the Senate will be at stake exactly nine months from Monday.

So, of course, will the presidency itself. Bush has embraced the cause of "compassionate conservatism," a label his critics have already sought to turn against him and are sure to do so many times more in coming months. Many Democrats have said his vision is anything but compassionate, and some deficit-hating Republicans have said the president's spending ideas have veered from true conservatism.

Opposition from those groups -- as well as from lawmakers in both parties who may recoil from making domestic spending cuts in an election year -- will make it hard for the White House to get the budget approved in its present form.

But the budget message on Monday tried to strike a note of optimism blended with prudence.

"The federal budget -- like America itself -- is in solid shape, considering the extraordinary strains placed upon it: a stock market collapse that began in early 2000; a recession that was fully under way by early 2001; revelation of corporate scandals; and, of course, the Sept. 11 attacks and ensuing war on terror," the budget message declares.

The budget envisions a deficit of about a half-trillion dollars, but Bush has pledged to cut the deficit in half in five years.

The budget offering sets the stage for months of debate between the White House and Congress; between the House and Senate, between Republicans and Democrats -- and not least between factions within the parties.
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