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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Omnibuster: Forget about Topline Spending Cap
Dems Boost Funding Levels, Redirect Money with Impunity
Bush appears to have won the Battle of the Topline, with the House approving an omnibus package (summary; text)
accepting President Bush's insistence on the $933 billion cap on total discretionary spending in FY 2008 he requested back in February. On top of that, he will get a $70 billion downpayment on his $200 billion "emergency" spending supplemental request.
So he's not sweating the small stuff. Even though the small stuff adds about $11 billion ($7.5 billion in emergency funding for border security and other initiatives and $3.7 billion in contingent emergency funding for veterans) in off-budget spending -- roughly splitting the difference between his $933 billion budget and the $956 billion provided in Congress' Budget Resolution.
On top of that, we've heard nary a peep out of the White House about reordered on-budget spending in the House-passed omnibus that pulls billions out of Bush priorities and redirects them to Democratic priority programs. The chart below (hat tip: Craig Jennings) identifies the re-arrangement of some of the bigger deck chairs provided for in the House-passed omnibus.
President's Budget Request and House FY 2008 Omnibus Spending Levels
(millions of dollars) |
| Program | President's Request | Omnibus Level | Difference |
| Labor-HHS-Education | 140,900 | 144,800 | +3,900 |
 Medical research into diseases including Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's disease and diabetes | | | +613 |
| Rural Health Programs | | | +147 |
| Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | | | +393 |
| Low-Income Home Energy Assistance (LIHEAP) | | | +788 |
| Community Services Block Grant | 0 | 654 | +654 |
 Head Start | | | +114 |
| Pell Grants | | | +801 |
| Reading First | 1,019 | 393 | -626 |
| Homeland Security | 34,200 | 35,100 | +900 |
| First Responder Grant Programs | 3,400 | 4,100 | +700 |
| Agriculture | 17,800 | 19,200 | +1,400 |
| Commodity Supplemental Food Program | 0 | 140 | +140 |
| State-Foreign Ops | 34,900 | 32,800 | -2,100 |
| Millennium Challenge Corporation | 3,000 | 1,500 | -1,500 |
| Transportation-HUD | 48,000 | 48,900 | +900 |
| Highway Infrastructure & Bridges | | | +631 |
| Community Development Block Grants | | | +566 |
| Energy-Water | 30,500 | 31,500 | +1,000 |
| Renewable energy and energy efficiency programs | | | +486 |
| Strategic Petroleum Reserve | 329 | 187 | -142 |
| Global Nuclear Energy Partnership | 395 | 179 | -216 |
| International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor | 121 | 0 | -121 |
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| List is not comprehensive. Indented lines are constituent parts of non-indented line items. |
Sources:
Posted by Dana Chasin
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