Pat Dollard

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Where else do you think all of this money is coming from?

WASHINGTON – In twin strokes, President Barack Obama is calling on Congress to reward generous budget increases to domestic programs while proposing relatively modest cuts to wasteful or obsolete programs that just won’t seem to die.

Officials said Wednesday that Obama’s promised line-by-line scrub of the federal budget had produced a roster of 121 budget cuts totaling $17 billion—or about one-half of 1 percent of the $3.4 trillion budget Congress has approved for next year. The details were being unveiled Thursday.

Those savings are far exceeded by a phone-book-sized volume detailing Obama’s generous increases for domestic programs that will accompany the call for cuts.

Most of the major elements of Obama’s budget for next year were released in February. Additional details were coming out Thursday and next week.

The roster of cuts won’t be easy for Congress to swallow. Lawmakers from the potent California, New York and Florida delegations are sure to fight the elimination of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which gives money to states to help defray the cost of incarcerating illegal immigrants who commit crimes. President George W. Bush tried and failed to kill the $400 million program several times.

About half the budget savings would come from an effort by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to curb defense programs, including ending production of the F-22 fighter and killing a much-maligned replacement helicopter fleet for the president.

Budget Director Peter Orszag briefed Democratic lawmakers on a partial roster of the cuts Wednesday. Obama also is fleshing out the details of the $1.3 trillion portion of the budget that he requested Congress pass through appropriations bills for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.

And just as Congress is beginning work on a new war bill to fund military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into the fall, Obama is sending up a $130 billion request to fund them next year. That figure may not be adequate considering the increase in the tempo of operations in Afghanistan.

Obama has said repeatedly his administration will go through the budget “line by line” to eliminate waste. But the resulting savings are relatively minor compared with the government’s fiscal woes, especially a deficit that’s likely to exceed $1.5 trillion this year.

Administration and congressional officials described elements of the budget proposals only on condition of anonymity to discuss them before they’re made public.

Republicans weren’t impressed with the cuts.

“While we appreciate the newfound attention to saving taxpayer dollars from this administration, we respectfully suggested that we should do far more,” House Minority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said.

Many of the cuts mirror those proposed previously by Bush but largely rejected by Congresses controlled by both Republicans and Democrats.

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Calif., said Obama’s recommendations won’t be “universally embraced” but said Congress also would weigh in with savings recommendations of its own to cut spending.

“This is something that’s sorely needed,” Cardoza said.

In fact, Democrats already have pared about $10 billion from Obama’s appropriations requests in passing the $3.4 trillion congressional budget plan last month.

And lawmakers are unlikely to go along with a call to raise—after 2010—per-ticket fees on airline travel to fund airport security programs.

In a preview, administration officials named a few targets Thursday which mostly represented easy-to-pluck targets, like ending the Education Department’s attache in Paris, at a savings of $632,000 a year. Another example: the obsolete LORAN-C aircraft navigation system, which still gets $35 million a year despite being made obsolete by the satellite-based Global Positioning System.

In other budget areas, the administration would keep paying for private-school vouchers for about 1,700 children receiving them in Washington, D.C., an administration official said. Obama is proposing $12.2 million for the 2010-11 school year and would like to continue the funding until the kids in the program graduate. He would not allow new students into the program. (AP)

Politico:The 2010 budget fight begins in earnest Thursday when the White House rolls out its detailed spending requests together with up to $17 billion in savings from terminating or severely cutting 121 programs — many long defended by interests in Congress.

“None of this is going to be easy,” said an administration official briefing reporters Wednesday night.

In fact, to meet the goals set by the budget resolution last week, Democrats will have to go a big step further by cutting an additional $10 billion in reductions from President Barack Obama’s appropriations requests.

Easy White House targets include an Education Department attaché in France, costing about $632,000 a year. But Wyoming and other Western coal states are sure to protest estimated savings of about $142 million from changes in the federal abandoned mine payments.

The State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, now about $400 million a year, would be terminated — provoking an almost certain fight with the powerful California delegation. And close to half of the $17 billion is dependent on Defense Secretary Robert Gates navigating first through a set of difficult fights over terminating weapons systems.

Below the radar are more obscure but still important fights affecting contractors such as Raytheon, which has had a major stake in the Homeland Security Department’s multibillion-dollar initiative to develop sensors to detect illicit radioactive materials entering the United States.

Begun in 2004 under the Bush administration, the so-called ASP, or advanced spectroscopic portal, technology has been questioned by Congress over the years, and it is now one of the targets in the administration’s $17 billion savings package.

Below the radar are more obscure but still important fights affecting contractors such as Raytheon, which has had a major stake in the Homeland Security Department’s initiative to develop sensors to detect illicit radioactive materials entering the United States.

Begun in 2004 under the Bush administration, the so-called ASP, or advanced spectroscopic portal, technology has been questioned by Congress over the years, and it is now one of the targets in the administration’s $17 billion savings package.

Altogether, about $11.5 billion of these savings would be achieved through the dozen annual appropriations bills slated to move through the House and Senate this summer. And as already estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, the administration will be seeking an estimated $1.096 trillion in new spending for defense and domestic programs, as well as foreign aid.

On top of this, the White House also wants $130 billion to continue U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this context, $11.5 billion in savings amounts to less than 1 percent of the president’s requests.

But for Obama, the symbolism is important as a first step toward greater efficiency in government. About two-thirds of the programs are relatively new to the chopping block. And while Republicans have gone after the Even Start early schooling program in the past, the dynamic will be different when a Democratic White House argues that the program is no longer needed, given new investments in Head Start, for example.

Democrats have the added challenge of not only sorting through the $11.5 billion in Obama cuts but coming up with $10 billion of their own.

Given the vested interests behind many of the targeted programs, the battle is a test of how much change the president can achieve. The strong temptation will be to backslide, by cutting his new spending initiatives instead of the status quo. And there is some evidence already that Democrats are resorting to such budget games in crafting a wartime spending bill now pending in Congress.

Even as Obama releases his budget details Thursday morning, the House Appropriations Committee will meet on this measure, which has grown to $94.2 billion, a $9.3 billion increase over the president’s request. Included are billions of dollars in foreign aid and military procurement funds, which are essentially being shifted from the 2010 budget year into 2009.

By doing so, Democrats create more room for themselves under the 2010 spending limits, and this is especially true for the foreign aid and State Department budget.

Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) has said he is less inclined to take this route when his own panel meets on the bill. But the pressure will grow once Democrats face the full scope of the administration’s domestic spending requests — and the difficulty of some of the savings being assumed to finance the president’s numbers.

House Appropriations Committee Chairman Dave Obey brushed aside reporters’ questions after being briefed by White House Budget Director Peter Orszag on the proposed program terminations Wednesday in the Capitol. “I’m not going to comment on someone else’s pony show,” said the Wisconsin Democrat, who has been outspoken as well in questioning the long-term cost implications of the administration’s commitments to Afghanistan and its neighbor Pakistan.

In a press conference this week, Obey surprised many Democratic allies by bluntly warning that he was giving one year to see progress in the region or it would risk losing his support. And the bill would assign to the State Department — not the Department of Defense — primary responsibility for overseeing a new $400 million counterinsurgency fund to help train Pakistani forces to cope with Taliban insurgents.

Inouye is hopeful of shifting that money back to Defense. But the greater concern, even among Obey allies, is that his remarks were interpreted as some firm deadline for U.S. involvement.

“Mr. Obey, by his own admission, was giving his own opinion,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Wednesday, “and no timeline is written into the funding bill itself.”

“We are in Afghanistan because it is in our national interest to fight terrorism, and that is where it exists,” Pelosi said. “Regretfully, we took our eye off the ball there and moved our operations and our intelligence and the rest to Iraq a long time ago. The president now has to take the time that is necessary to keep the American people safe, to stabilize the region and to do so in a way that makes everyone who has an interest in the stability of Afghanistan to make an investment there.

“So how long will it take? I don’t know. But it is essential to our security that we fight terrorism there.”