An agency-by-agency guide to Obama's budget
(AP) – 54 minutes ago
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama proposed a $3.8 trillion budget on Monday for fiscal 2013 that aims to slash the deficit by $4 trillion over 10 years but still envisions growth in the government's major health benefit programs. Here is the agency-by-agency breakdown:
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Agency: Commerce
Spending: $9.2 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 15.6 percent increase
Discretionary Spending: $8 billion
Highlights: Obama's proposed budget for the department would provide $708 million for the National Institute of Standards and Technology laboratories with the goal of making U.S. manufacturers more competitive. The president also is calling for spending $517 million on the International Trade Administration to promote U.S. exports in key markets abroad and to improve trade enforcement.
Obama's budget blueprint calls for more than $5 billion for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an increase of about $160 million.
The administration would increase funds for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to accelerate patent processing and improve patent quality.
Obama also wants $10 billion to help build an interoperable public safety broadband network. Those costs would be offset by auctioning spectrum used to expand wireless broadband access and services.
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Agency: Environmental Protection Agency
Spending: $8.1 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 2.1 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $8.3 billion
Highlights: Perhaps anticipating resistance from congressional Republicans, who are looking to target the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, Obama has proposed a $175 million cut to the nation's environmental protector. It's the third consecutive year that the Democratic president has called for trimming the agency's spending plan.
To achieve those savings, the EPA's proposed budget reduces cleanup money for the nation's most hazardous waste sites, leaving enough to deal with emergency releases. It also would eliminate what it calls redundant grant programs to states and tribes to help reduce indoor radon exposure and monitor beaches to ensure they're safe enough for swimming.
To help states meet a host of new air pollution regulations finalized and in the works at EPA, the budget includes a $66 million increase for air quality programs. But it cuts money to states to improve infrastructure and treatment plants for drinking water.
Rep. Ed Whitfield of Kentucky, a top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters last week that the GOP would be taking a hard look at the agency's assistance to states. But many of them are struggling financially and have made their own cuts to environmental programs, reducing monitoring, inspections and enforcement in communities and neighborhoods.
The budget includes $5 million for the EPA to increase the number and frequency of inspections at high-risk oil and chemical facilities.
Obama reiterated his commitment to reduce the gases blamed for global warming, and says the agency will continue to pursue ways to control greenhouse gas-pollution from power plants, factories and refineries, despite opposition from Republicans and some industry groups.
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Agency: Housing and Urban Development
Spending: $44 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 21.3 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $35.3 billion
Highlights: Obama's proposed budget would provide $2.3 billion for the administration's goal to end chronic homelessness. HUD's programs serve primarily the poor, elderly and disabled.
The blueprint also seeks $34.8 billion to preserve rental housing assistance to 4.7 million low-income families and $154 million to expand affordable housing to seniors and persons with disabilities. Obama is also asking for $650 million for housing for Native American tribes.
Obama's proposal would keep funding for the Community Development Block Grant program at 2012 levels. States and cities use the money to build streets and sidewalks, provide water and build sewers and make other infrastructure improvements in low-income neighborhoods. Local officials struggling to balance budgets support the program.
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Agency: Justice
Spending: $30 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 15.3 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $17.9 billion
Highlights: Obama wants to spend more than $700 million to investigate and prosecute financial crimes that take place from Wall Street to Main Street, an increase of $55 million over the current budget. The extra money would pay for additional FBI agents, prosecutors, civil attorneys and accountants. The types of misconduct the law enforcement money would target include securities and commodities fraud, investment scams like the infamous Ponzi scheme of Bernard Madoff, mortgage foreclosure schemes and fraud against economic recovery programs.
The administration is proposing to spend nearly $40 million to combat intellectual property theft, an increase of $5 million from the current budget. Criminals using the Internet have cashed in on the explosion in online commerce by trafficking in counterfeit goods and copyrighted products. The Obama administration has worked with law enforcement officials from more than 30 countries to round up criminals running the illicit networks.
The Justice Department is proposing to spend $12.444 billion on its four key law enforcement components, $38 million less than the current spending level. The four agencies are the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the U.S. Marshals Service. Since 2001, the year of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Justice Department's law enforcement components have grown by 106 percent. The administration says it is encouraged by the downward trend in violent crime rates and that the Justice Department has identified $138 million in savings that will be carried out by consolidating or eliminating some offices.
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Agency: Labor
Spending: $89 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 35.7 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $12 billion
Highlights: Most of the cuts at Labor would come from an expected decrease in spending on unemployment insurance programs as the overall unemployment rate declines and fewer people claim benefits.
But those projections also assume there will be no further spending on long-term unemployment benefits beyond Feb. 29. That's when a temporary extension of benefits that Congress enacted late last year will expire. House and Senate negotiators are working on a deal that would extend those benefits past the end of the month as part of broader discussions on extending the payroll tax cut. The deal is likely to reduce the maximum number of 99 weeks that unemployed people are allowed to seek benefits.
Like last year's plan, the budget would trim $450 million from Labor's share of a program that helps train older workers for jobs and community service programs. The program would be transferred to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
The agency also is expected to save about $245 million from a reduced work load in processing unemployment benefit claims.
The budget would increase spending on wage enforcement and workplace safety programs, including $10 million to crack down on companies that cheat workers out of minimum wage and overtime payments. It would also boost a program that identifies workers misclassified as independent contractors.
Another $15 million increase would go to programs that offer employment and training services to help the long-term unemployed return to the work force.
The department is requesting an additional $17 million to help reduce the backlog of mine safety cases.
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Agency: NASA
Spending: $17.7 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 0.3 percent decrease.
Discretionary Spending: $17.7 billion
Highlights: Obama's proposed space agency budget entails a large shift within NASA for how the same amount of money is essentially spent. The biggest loser is the planet Mars, along with exploring the rest of the planets in our solar system. The president proposed cutting $309 million for studying planets this year, with more cuts in future years. After an already mostly built Mars mission in 2013, future journeys to the red planet are eliminated, put on hold or restructured. While the study of planets would be sliced 21 percent, spending for the overall budget and long delayed James Webb Space Telescope would increase 21 percent. The telescope which may cost $8 billion is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope and would peer further into the universe and back in time than ever.
The president wants to double the amount of money spent to help private firms develop their own spaceships that could eventually carry astronauts and others to the International Space Station as taxis. This would replace the now retired space shuttle program and the dependence on Russia for rides into orbit. The president wants to spend $829.7 million to help these companies, but Congress has regularly cut his commercial space proposals. The budget includes the last bit of spending on the retired space shuttles: $71 million.
Much of the spending continues a trend shifting from current space missions to developing the next generation of rockets and capsules for flights out of Earth's orbit to an asteroid or even to Mars. The president proposes an extra $345 million in spending on developing new rocketry and space technology. That overall proposal includes $1.8 billion for a congressionally mandated large rocket that could carry bigger loads further into space and $1 billion for the Orion crew capsule to take astronauts to new places. A first test flight of the spaceships — without astronauts — could be as early as 2017, with astronauts flying in them no earlier than 2021.
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Agency: State
Spending: $69 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 13.8 percent increase
Discretionary Spending: $54.3 billion
Highlights: Obama's proposed budget for the State Department and U.S. foreign assistance calls for spending $11.8 billion for civilian operations and aid in Iraq ($4.8 billion), Afghanistan ($4.6 billion) and Pakistan ($2.4 billion). It retains major military aid programs to Israel, which will get $3.1 billion; Egypt, which is slated for $1.3 billion, and Jordan, which is to get $300 million.
The spending plan sets aside $770 million for the creation of a new Middle East and North Africa Incentive Fund to promote democracy, good governance and free market economies in Arab nations roiled by revolt. It allocates $2.7 billion in economic assistance to support transitions in other parts of the developing world, including the world's newest nation, South Sudan, Liberia, Haiti and Myanmar.
The proposal maintains billions of dollars in spending on international health projects, including the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, which will cost $5.4 billion and expects to have treated six million people, many in Africa, by the end of 2013.
On the savings side, the budget pares aid to eastern European and Eurasian countries by 18 percent, cuts back on a planned expansion of State Department personnel and reduces an ambitious overseas construction program that was to build new secure embassies.
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Agency: Transportation
Spending: $74.3 billon
Percentage Change from 2012: 39.4 percent decrease
Discretionary Spending: $13.8 billion
Highlights: Obama's proposed transportation budget includes a six-year, $476-billion surface transportation bill to be paid for by user fees and some of the savings from reducing military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a decrease from the bare bones, six-year, $556 billion surface transportation bill he proposed last year.
A key difference is that last year Obama's plan — which was largely ignored by Congress — didn't include proposals to pay transportation investments. Also, both last year's plan and this year's plan far exceed the spending called for under transportation bills in the House and Senate, where lawmakers have struggled to find money to pay for highway and transit projects. The House bill would spend $260 billion over 4 1/2 years; the Senate $109 billion over less than two years.
Like last year, Obama's proposal calls for significant funding for high-speed trains — $47 billion over six years. That's about $6 billion less than last year's proposal. But neither the House nor the Senate bills contain any money for high-speed rail. Nor is there any money in the current budget.
Obama's budget also calls for a $50 billion "upfront" infusion for roads, bridges, transit systems, border crossing railways and runways in the current fiscal year to spur job creation.
The idea of taking war "savings" to pay for other programs is budgetary sleight of hand. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been largely financed through borrowing, so stopping the wars doesn't create a pool of ready cash, just less debt.
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Agency: Veterans Affairs
Spending: $137.4 billion
Percentage Change from 2012: 10.6 percent increase
Discretionary Spending: $61 billion
Highlights: Obama's budget reflects the growing number of veterans who will need health care through the VA. The budget projects that about 610,000 veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will get health care through VA's hospitals and clinics this fiscal year. The budget seeks spending increases for virtually all health services provided, including a 5 percent increase for mental health services, which has become a top priority among congressional oversight committees, and a double-digit increase for health programs designed to assist female veterans.
The budget also proposes $1 billion over five years for a Veterans Jobs Corps, a new initiative that would put veterans to work rebuilding roads, trails and other infrastructure on public lands.
The budget seeks a 33 percent increase in spending to combat homelessness among veterans. The administration has set a goal of eliminating homelessness among veterans by 2015. The money would be used to hire coordinators who will help veterans with disability claims, housing problems and other needs. Additional money would be provided to non-profits that help house veterans and their families.
Obama also is seeking more money to deal with the growing number of disability claims that the department is getting from veterans. Veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan are filing claims that include about 8.5 disabilities per veteran, a rate nearly double that for claims from veterans of previous wars.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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