President Bush has said he will veto the appropriations bill that funds the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education for the coming fiscal year, while he plans to sign the bill funding the Department of Defense.
The Administration says the funding Congress provides in the Labor-HHS-Education bill is “irresponsible” and “excessive” and has sought to portray it as part of a congressional plan that constitutes “runaway spending.” This short analysis finds these claims to be misleading or inaccurate. In contrast, the Administration’s main complaint about Defense funding is that the large increase Congress provides is not large enough.
Given the hefty increase in defense funding (which is for defense programs and activities unrelated to Iraq, Afghanistan, or the “war on terror”) and the far more modest increase in Labor-HHS-Education funding, the President’s choice to veto only the bill that is smaller and growing more slowly strongly suggests that his objections to the Labor-HHS-Education bill should not be characterized as being based on “fiscal discipline.” Another clear indication that fiscal discipline is not the Administration’s main budgetary objective is its insistence that the $51 billion cost of extending relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax for one year not be paid for — and thus be deficit financed. These positions suggest the President’s budget disputes with Congress are about how his priorities differ from Congressional priorities, not about fiscal responsibility.
This analysis makes five points.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concludes that the Labor-HHS-Appropriations bill would increase funding by $5 billion over current levels while the President would cut $7 billion; Congress and the President are thus $12 billion apart. Others have said that Congress would increase funding by $6 billion and the President would cut it by $4 billion, making them $10 billion apart. Both sets of figures are accurate. They differ because of two choices made in presenting the figures.
- First, we choose to compare the President’s request and the congressional bill to the current level of funding (funding for 2007) as adjusted for inflation, i.e., relative to the CBO baseline. (See Column A in the table.) The alternative approach, shown in column B, compares 2008 funding to 2007 funding without accounting for inflation.
- Second, we choose to display the congressional funding level for 2008 as $2 billion higher than some others do — as $152.8 billion (Column A) rather than $150.8 billion (Column B). Our figures include a $2 billion increase in funds that are technically provided as advance appropriations for 2009 but that go to programs such as education grants, whose 12-month “program year” spans the end of fiscal year 2008 and the beginning of fiscal year 2009. In such programs, advance funding for 2009 and regular funding for 2008 are effectively equivalent, because they both would be used in the same “program year.” Accordingly, we treat the increase in advance 2009 funding as though it were an increase in 2008 funding.
Labor-HHS-Education funding: two portrayals (in billions of dollars) |
| A | B |
2007 level | | 144.8 |
2007 level adjusted for inflation (CBO baseline) | 147.6 | |
Bush level for 2008 (CBO estimate) | 140.9 | 140.9 |
Congressional level for 2008 | 152.8 | 150.8 |
Bush’s reduction from 2007 level | -6.7 | -3.8 |
Congress’s increase to 2007 level | +5.2 | +6.0 |
Difference: Congress vs Bush | 11.9 | 9.8 |
Notes: excludes emergencies. May not add due to rounding.
The bill funds such programs as Head Start, child care, Title 1 education for the disadvantaged, special education, vocational education, Pell Grants, the National Institutes of Health, the Center on Disease Control, community health centers, maternal and child health grants, rural health programs, the low-income home energy assistance program, the community services block grant, job training and the Job Corps, and mine safety.