The loud thud that most of you heard while listening to today's Judiciary hearings was the sound of George Bush's
$2.77 trillion budget hitting the steps of our nation's capitol early today.
It will take weeks for bloggers to seperate the wheat from the mountains of marketing chaff in the voluminous tome, but I am happy to provide a glimpse into some of the highlights below the fold:
Talking points by the numbers:
Education- Creates the largest single-year cut in Federal education funding in American History ($2.1 billion).
- Eliminates Perkins loans for College. (Drops funding from $4,791m to $67m)
- Decreases Federal Family Education loans by 75 percent (Drops funding from $18245m to $5340m)
- Freezes funding for Pell Grants for the 5th year in a row (this, despite the fact that College tuition has increased by 46 percent since Bush took office).
Seniors:- Eliminates a Supplemental food program that provides assistance to more than 400,000 low income senior citizens.
- Cuts spending on medicare by $36 billion.
Law Enforcement:- Cuts funding for community police programs by 80 percent.
- Eliminates funding to fight meth addiction.
- Cuts assistance to firefighters and other first responders by 55 percent.
Supporting the troops:- Doubles the cost of health care enrollment for enlisted men and women in the U.S. Armed Forces and triple the cost of health care enrollment for officers.
- Creates a 40 percent increase in co-pays for prescription drugs for members of the Armed forces.
- Doubles prescription drug costs for veterans.
- Bans VA health care coverage to "middle income veterans" making between $27,000 - $40,000.
- Decreases drug prevention programs by 70 percent from 2004 ($672m - $218m)
Thanks to Senators
Kennedy,
Obama, and
Jeffords for their excellent backgrounders on the President's budget proposals.