President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget tomorrow that would shrink most parts of the government unrelated to the nation's security while slowing spending on Medicare by $36 billion during the next five years, according to White House documents.
The spending plan Bush is to recommend to Congress will call for the elimination or reduction of 141 programs -- for a savings of $14.5 billion -- across a broad swath of federal agencies, according to administration and congressional officials who have had access to budget documents in advance. Wide-ranging as they are, those cuts pale in comparison with the White House's attempt to carve money from Medicare -- the first tangible result from a vow the president made in his State of the Union address last week to constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and the poor.
Overall, the budget for the 2007 fiscal year would further reshape the government in the way the administration has been striving to during the past half-decade: building up military capacity and defenses against terrorist threats on U.S. soil, while restraining expenditures on many domestic areas, from education programs to train service.
For the second consecutive year, the White House will ask for an outright reduction in the "discretionary" part of the budget -- the portion that is determined year to year -- apart from the Pentagon and homeland security. According to one congressional source, White House officials plan to emphasize their frugality in discretionary spending, as they propose to cut it more deeply than Congress just did in the budget for the current fiscal year that was approved last week.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401179.html
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