Here is the first letter from Bush to Pelosi, regarding proposed cuts to domestic programs, from 3/9/07 (emphasis mine):
I ask the Congress to consider the enclosed FY 2007 request to cancel $3.1 billion of funding from lower-priority Federal programs and excess funds. This request would offset fully the funds needed to address the $3.1 billion FY 2007 funding shortfall for the Department of Defense to implement the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission. The proposed cancellations would affect the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education, Energy, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Interior, and Transportation, as well as the Corps of Engineers.
The details of this request are set forth in the enclosed letter from the Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
I'll return to the grisly details of what Bush proposes to cut from domestic programs in order (as he claims here) to fully fund the base closures that were rammed through in 2005. You'll recall that this was another of Rumsfeld's hare-brained schemes. Rumsfeld claimed improbably that the military could save nearly $50 billion by closing military bases en masse. Instead, these closures are turning out to be of dubious value, as more credible people had predicted.
In questioning the Pentagon's estimate on savings, the commission has pointed to its own analysis as well as a report by the Government Accountability Office that found upfront costs will total $24 billion.
That report said eliminating jobs held by military personnel would make up about half of the Pentagon's projected annual recurring savings. It also said much of that money would not be available for other uses because the jobs — and salaries — simply would be relocated.
"It doesn't appear to us the savings are real," Phillip Coyle, a commissioner and former assistant secretary of defense, told officials.
The DOD has in fact been budgeting billions every year to pay for the initial base closings:
The Defense Department's proposed $379.9 billion fiscal 2004 budget suggests the Pentagon will close or realign as many as 25 percent of all bases during the next round of base closures in 2005.
The proposed budget lays out a six-year spending plan that calls for spending $2.97 billion on base closures in fiscal 2006, $5.26 billion in fiscal 2007, and $2.25 billion in fiscal 2008.
But now, Bush tells Pelosi, DOD needs another $3.1 billion dollars alone for fiscal year 2007...just to supplement the already large base-closure budget.
As it turns out, though, that's not quite the whole truth. Wander on over to the Office of Management and Budget, and you'll find a copy of the enclosure that Bush directed OMB to send along with his letter to Pelosi (PDF).
Submitted for your consideration is an FY 2007 request to cancel $3.1 billion of funding from lower-priority Federal programs and excess funds. These proposals would offset fully funds needed to address the $3.1 billion FY 2007 funding shortfall for the Department of Defense (DOD) to implement the recommendations of the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission. These funds are necessary for DOD to continue scheduled redeployments of military personnel and their families from overseas stations to the United States and support the training, mobilization and deployment of military forces in support of the Global War on Terror. In addition, these funds are required to maintain the legislated schedule for BRAC realignments and closures, which is important to communities that have already made specific plans and commitments.
The statement of purpose is pretty murky, but my understanding of the phrase I've emphasized is that the administration is slipping an additional purpose into the package. Some of this big pot of $3.1 billion will (presumably) be used for base closings, but some is also going to be siphoned off to pay for the wars in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. Funny how the President didn't happen to mention that in his letter to Pelosi.
So what domestic programs does the OMB suggest taking an ax to? The document goes on to list them. I'll highlight a few of the suggested cuts, to give you an idea of what this endless war in the Middle East is doing for America. Remember that the administration considers these things to be 'excess'.
Proposed cuts (in millions of dollars)
- Dept. of Agriculture, $245.3, including cuts from the Rural Business Enterprise Grants and Hatch Act Formula Funds (given to State Agricultural Experiment Stations)
- Dept. of Commerce, $79.1, from the Advanced Technology Program
- Dept. of Education, $891.7, including cuts from Career and Technical Education State Grants, from Tech-Prep State Grants, and from the family literacy program Even Start
- Dept. of Energy, $200 from the Environmental Management program
- HHS, $118 from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention
- HUD, $740 from Community Development Block Grants
- Dept. of Interior, $77.3, including cuts from the Bureau of Indian Affairs' Education Construction program and from the Land and Water Conservation Fund State Grants program
- Dept. of Transportation, $670, mostly in cuts from grants for passenger rail service
These cuts show you clearly where this administration's priorities are, and they are not where people live, and work, and strive to make better lives for themselves. With bird flu a looming threat, it's time to cut funds from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. With states' budgets sinking under the weight of unfunded educational mandates imposed by the 'education President', the way to pay for deployments to Iraq is to cut close to a billion dollars from educational grant programs. With oil and gasoline prices soaring, the rational way to plan for the nation's energy and transportation needs is to cut back on passenger rail service.
How does the Bush administration justify these cuts? Not very persuasively, I suppose I'd say. Here for example is its reasoning for cutting Hatch Act funds:
The proposal would cancel $130.0 million from the Hatch Act formula grant program, which provides funding to land grant universities...The Administration has consistently emphasized that funding through peer-reviewed competitive research programs generates the highest quality research, and therefore believes that providing significant amounts of additional funding to statutorily-derived formula programs is not the most effective use of taxpayer dollars.
You get the impression that nobody at the upper reaches of this administration attended a land-grant university. There's an awful lot of 'because-we-say-so' in these justifications.
The proposal would cancel $740.0 million from the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. This program was proposed to be reduced in the President's FY 2007 and FY 2008 Budgets, and P.L. 110-5 provides funding significantly above these requests. The current CDBG program is not well-targeted and program results have not been adequately demonstrated or reported. The Administration continues to support CDBG legislative reforms, similar to the CDBG Reform Act, which was transmitted to the Congress in May 2006.
And get a load of what people who own rambling estates think of publicly-owned parks:
The proposal would cancel $28.0 million from the Land and Water Conservation Fund State grants program in the National Park Service. The program provides grants to States for land acquisition and improvements to State and local parks. No funds for this program were requested in the FYs 2006, 2007, or 2008 President's Budgets on the grounds that paying to improve State and local parks are decisions better left to State and local taxpayers.
In its details and overall, this is an obnoxious proposal from OMB, but it drives home exactly what this foolish invasion of Iraq has meant to our common wealth. No wonder this stinker from Bush came as a Friday document dump. It will be interesting to see whether Congressional Democrats even treat it as meriting serious discussion.
As I hinted above, there was a second letter from Bush to Pelosi on Friday, this one requesting that Congress permit an unspecified amount of money to be reallocated within the pending DOD budget. We learn from the OMB enclosure (PDF) attached to the second letter, that Bush is asking to shift $3.2 billion around within the DOD budget; the great majority of the sum will fund operations in Iraq, and most of the rest is for Afghanistan. A relatively small amount, $50 million, will go toward improving the health care for veterans.
The $3.2 billion is to come from a variety of less important lines in the DOD budget—or as OMB puts it, things "not associated with Iraq and Afghanistan".
In addition to all that, Bush is asking for permission to raise the ceiling by $3.5 billion in what he is authorized to transfer within the DOD budget. The purpose for that provision, again, is to fund the Iraq war.
All of this goes to underline the points that emerge from the first letter to Pelosi: That the Iraq War is bankrupting the US, and that increasingly desperate budgetary measures have to be employed just to maintain the appearance that the Bush administration has things under control.
The long-term damage to our military's readiness, both in personnel and in materiel, will be profound. The drain upon our finances, regrettably, may be even more difficult to repair. And if this administration has any say in the matter, all of this will be cloaked from the American public for as long as possible.
crossposted from Unbossed
Update [2007-3-12 18:46:44 by smintheus]: In the comments, SarahLee points out that last night Rock Strongo posted a diary on the Bush proposal to swipe 3.1 billion dollars from domestic programs to fund the Iraq quagmire. RS noticed that Agence France-Presse has a brief report on the subject. (When I researched this post yesterday, Google didn't seem to be aware of the AFP report.)
Anyway, AFP reports this remarkable statement from a White House spokesman:
The request "is an adjustment to the president's (1997 [sic - clearly 2007] fiscal year) supplemental request to fund General Petraeus' request for combat support troops, military police for detainee operations as well as as the additional troops the president announced for Afghanistan a few weeks ago," Gordon Johndroe said in Uruguay
It's hard to tell whether Johndroe was indeed explaining the purpose of the proposed domestic budget cuts (that is, regarding the first letter to Pelosi), or whether the reporter has accidentally conflated the two different proposals sent to Pelosi.
If the former is the case, then the White House spokesman gave to reporters a justification for the domestic cuts that flatly contradicts what Bush's (first) letter to Pelosi states. For Bush asserts in that letter that the money to be transfered from 'excess' domestic programs was to be used for base closures. It's only in the OMB report that we find any suggestion that the money might also be used for the "War on Terror".
Update [2007-3-12 18:46:44 by smintheus]: It looks like the AFP reporter did indeed conflate the two requests. It was an easy mistake to make; the first letter concerned 3.1 billion dollars, the second letter 3.2 billion. This report in the LA Times relates Johndroe's statement to the second letter to Pelosi, rather than the first letter:
National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said the $3.2 billion requested in the letter would pay for the 3,500 troops for Afghanistan, as well as the deployment to Iraq of 2,400 combat support troops, 2,200 military police and 129 troops for provincial reconstruction teams.
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