Congress follows executive branch lead on 2006 spending cuts

In the fiscal 2006 appropriations cycle, Congress passed administration-proposed spending cuts worth $6.48 billion, according to a fact sheet released recently by the Office of Management and Budget.

Lawmakers achieved the savings by following 89 administration recommendations to scale back or eliminate programs in spending bills, the last of which was approved on Dec. 23 after contentious provisions for Alaskan oil drilling were removed. As part of his budget request last February, President Bush asked Congress to make cuts to 154 existing programs to reduce discretionary spending by $15.8 billion.

In fiscal 2005, Congress enacted only seven of the administration's 65 proposed cuts, achieving $366 million in savings, the fact sheet stated.

With the targeted budget cuts and an across-the-board spending cut of 1 percent affecting most agencies, the 2006 appropriations bills hold discretionary spending growth to 1.1 percent -- below the rate of expected inflation, OMB said.

The 2006 appropriations measures also include close to $40 billion in reductions to entitlement programs over five years. They incorporate provisions to slow growth in Medicaid and Medicare spending and cuts to student loan subsidy programs.

The budget fact sheet also noted that Congress reduced nonsecurity discretionary spending to below the previous year's level for the first time since the Reagan administration.

But Philip Joyce, professor of public policy and public administration at The George Washington University, stressed that it is difficult to compare the nonsecurity discretionary spending cuts touted by OMB to those described in previous budgets. "It used to be that you looked at defense spending and domestic spending," Joyce said. "What they've done now is lumped homeland security in with defense, so it makes it hard to compare. A lot of what's now in homeland security used to be looked at as domestic."

Jonathan Breul, senior fellow at the IBM Center for The Business of Government, said he sees the increased number of agreed upon program cuts as an indication that concern for spending reform is growing. "It probably means that the negotiation over the budget for next year is going to be even tougher--the need to restrain spending is going to make the passage of next year's budget even more contentious than this year's," he said.