Earlier this year, President Bush released his budget proposal for fiscal year 2009, which proposed cuts or inadequate increases to funding for key education and healthcare programs. The budget also would unwisely divert $300 million to a new, unproven national voucher program, would continue the District of Columbia voucher program and would increase funding for a flawed merit pay program (Teacher Incentive Fund) by more than $100 million.

The following programs face significant cuts:

• Teacher-quality state grants would be cut by $100 million.
• After-school programs would be cut by $280 million.
• Safe and drug-free schools state grants face a nearly $200 million cut in funding.
• Supplemental educational opportunity grants funding would be eliminated.
• Career and technical education state grants funding would be eliminated.
• Medicare and Medicaid face $200 billion in funding cuts.

Now we have our first opportunity to reject President Bush’s budget proposal through supporting budget resolutions that offer higher levels of overall spending. Last week, in response to President Bush’s budget, committees in the House of Representatives and the Senate produced budget resolutions for fiscal year 2009, which will be voted on later this week. While the budget resolutions do not provide the levels of funding we believe are needed, they offer substantially more funding than President Bush’s budget and will prevent the many program cuts the president has proposed. The budget resolutions in the House of Representatives and the Senate offer, respectively, $22 billion and $18 billion over President Bush’s funding request.

More specifically, the budget resolution in the House would provide approximately $7.1 billion in additional funding over President Bush’s budget for education, social services and job training programs. Similarly, the budget resolution in the Senate would provide approximately $8.8 billion in additional funding over President Bush’s budget for these important programs.

The low levels of proposed funding are due to President Bush’s threat to veto any spending bill that provides funding greater than the levels he has proposed. Last year the president made and followed through on an identical threat. Thanks to President Bush’s supporters in the House of Representatives, our allies in Congress were not able to override President Bush’s veto of a spending bill that provided significant increases in funding. As a result, while Congress again is pressing for increased funding, our allies recognize that there are simply not enough senators and representatives willing to override a presidential veto.

Hopefully, next year will have a new Congress and administration that are willing to properly fund healthcare and education programs. Until then, the budget resolutions now before Congress offer a good down payment toward meeting the needs of our children and their families.