February
11, 2005
Bush's Budget Focuses On Short-Term Politics, Not
Long-Term Future
By
Mort Kondracke
President
Bush said in his State of the Union address that his agenda
is all about building "a better world for our children
and grandchildren." But his new budget betrays a distinctly
short-term focus.
The
president, clearly responding to criticism that Republicans
haven't controlled federal spending, has proposed a tight
lid for domestic discretionary outlays - 13 percent of the
total budget - that in the process will likely starve scientific
research that ought to be considered an investment in the
nation's future.
In
addition, the Bush budget hides the true extent of long-term
debt burdens that his tax cuts and borrowing requirements
will impose on future generations. And his agenda largely
fails to curb one of the key drivers of future fiscal insolvency:
double-digit annual increases in health spending.
In
previous decades, federally funded research on basic science
has spawned entire industries based on computers, satellites,
lasers, high-speed communications and biotech.
The
prospect of future gains in optics, advanced materials,
imaging, genetic therapies and nanotechnology - in a context
of increasing movement of high-tech research capacity to
China and India - ought to impel the Bush administration
to consider research as investment, not "spending."
That
idea is particularly true for medical research, which has
the potential to help lower future health costs either by
conquering whole categories of disease or by postponing
disability, something that has already happened in dramatic
fashion for many patients being treated for heart disease
or AIDS.
In
his State of the Union address, Bush extolled medical research
for "developing treatments and cures that save lives
and help people overcome disabilities," and he thanked
Congress for doubling the budget of the National Institutes
of Health over the period from 1998 to 2003.
But
his budget this week called for just a 0.7 percent increase
in NIH funding for fiscal 2006 - well below the 3.2 percent
necessary to keep pace with biomedical inflation.
In
the words of Pat White, the federal relations director for
the Association of American Universities, a lobbying group
for big academic centers, "this is a crash-landing
for biomedical research" that could cut NIHresearch
grants by 8.7 percent.
"Although
there is no question that our fiscal circumstances and priorities
have changed since the doubling, we are now effectively
throwing away the biomedical research capacity that the
NIH doubling created," White said.
Somewhat
to its credit, the White House reversed earlier plans to
cut the National Science Foundation by 5 percent and instead
awarded it a 2.4 percent increase. But the increase still
leaves the agency just 2 percent above its 2004 funding
level.
In
November, after Congress cut the NSF's budget below even
Bush's request last year, New York Times reporter Robert
Pear noted that the NSF had helped finance the research
that led to Web browsers and search engines as well as advances
in weather forecasting, magnetic resonance imaging and highway
safety. Bush's new budget also cuts funding for basic research
at the Energy Department, which supports most physics research
in the United States as well as alternative-fuel studies.
Even the Pentagon, where the Internet was invented, stands
to lose research funding, although funding for weapons development
will rise.
Bush
did award a 2.1 percent increase for NASA space research,
principally for future manned travel to the moon and Mars.
This may or may not pay earthly dividends, but the overall
federal basic research budget is down $320 billion. That's
a lot, and it's short-sighted.
In
fact, most of Bush's entire budget document is distinctly
short-sighted. It forecasts spending for the next five years,
then stops - leaving a distorted picture of where the nation's
finances are heading in the long run.
"It's
good that they want to hold down spending," said Maya
MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible
Federal Budget. "If they show declining deficits for
five years, you'd think they'd want that trend to continue.
But it won't. Beginning in 2011, the deficit will start
zooming up."
Similarly,
the Concord Coalition's executive director, Robert Bixby,
charged that Bush "relies on budgetary gimmicks that
understate likely expenses and overstate likely revenue.
... The main problem with this budget is not what's in it,
but what's left out."
These
include continuing costs of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan,
the full cost of extending Bush's tax cuts and revising
the Alternative Minimum Tax and borrowing needed to pay
for Social Security reform and the Medicare prescription
drug benefit.
It
has just become public that the true cost of the drug benefit
over 10 years will be $720 billion, not the $400 billion
as originally forecast. Democrats are accusing Bush of dishonesty,
but it's fair to note that they were demanding a benefit
double the size of Bush's.
Bush
is proposing reforms for Social Security and Medicaid, but
his Medicaid cuts almost certainly will increase the ranks
of the uninsured in the United States from its current 45
million. And his health care proposals won't cover more
than about 9 million of them.
To
secure long-term fiscal health, the government needs to
invest in science, comprehensively reform health care, means-test
Medicare and stop cutting taxes for the wealthy. It also
needs a budget system that tells us what everything really
costs. Right now, it isn't happening.
Mort
Kondracke is the Executive Editor of Roll Call.
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