Obama plans cuts in 120 programs
Move comes after the president in his State of the Union address proposed freezing nonsecurity discretionary spending for three years.
President Obama will propose cutting or scaling back 120 programs saving $20 billion in its fiscal 2011 budget proposal set to be released Monday, the White House wrote on its blog on Saturday.
The move comes after Obama in Wednesday's State of the Union address proposed freezing nonsecurity discretionary spending for three years, which he said would save $250 billion over 10 years. The freeze is expected to do little to bring down the deficit, which the Congressional Budget Office put at $6 trillion over 10 years. The freeze plan drew some praise from congressional budget hawks, but they said more needs to be done.
In his fiscal 2010 budget proposal, Obama sought to end or reduce 121 programs for a one-year savings of approximately $17 billion; $11.5 billion was from discretionary savings. Congress went along with about $6.8 billion of those proposed cuts, nearly 60 percent, the White House said.
According to the White House, the budget will propose consolidating 38 K-12 education programs into 11.
"The current program structure at the Department of Education is fragmented and ineffective," the White House said. "The Department operates dozens of grant programs that impose narrow requirements on districts and fail to demand better outcomes or build a knowledge base of what works. Some of these programs have little evidence of success, while others are demonstrably failing to improve student achievement."
The White House will also propose to eliminate the Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit, which allows taxpayers eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit receive a portion of their credit throughout the year in their paychecks.
However, "only a tiny number of EITC eligible taxpayers claim the AEITC -- 3 percent, or 514,000 taxpayers according to the Government Accountability Office," the White House said. "And the error rate for the program is high: 80 percent of recipients did not comply with at least one program requirement. This ineffective and prone-to-error program should be eliminated."