HIDDEN SACRIFICE: Analysis Discovers Big Cuts Ahead for Iowa in Bush Budget
Iowa Fiscal Partnership

Behind the curtains of George W. Bush’s five-year plans for domestic services are substantial cuts to Iowans. These were not evident from the widely circulated budget plans for 2007; unlike traditional practice, the administration did not release its five-year numbers. Thanks to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which obtained and analyzed a less well-circulated administration computer run, a glimpse of the Iowa impact is available. In the context of proposed tax cuts, it illustrates the choices at stake.

TAX CUTS WOULD FORCE BIGGER DEFICITS DESPITE SPENDING CUTS

Overall, the budget would increase the federal deficit, both short term and long term.

The five-year plan would cut the domestic discretionary budget (annually appropriated services outside defense and international affairs) by $183 billion below 2006 funding, adjusted for inflation. Of those cuts, $167 billion would occur after 2007. By 2011, this spending would be about $57 billion (13 percent) below the amount needed to keep pace with inflation.

The proposed cuts in domestic spending would not reduce the deficit in the [Bush]’s plan; they are less than $285 billion in tax cuts proposed by [Bush].

Tax cuts proposed by [Bush] would benefit high-income people; several domestic spending cuts are in services for low-income people. The [Bush]’s proposals, for example, would mean:

    • 4,000 fewer Iowa participants would be served in the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children (WIC) in 2011 than 2006.

    • 3,400 fewer Iowa participants in the Commodity Supplemental Food Program for the Elderly in 2007 than in 2006 (420,000 fewer nationally)

    • 800 to as many as 1,100 fewer Head Start participants by 2011.

Combined with proposed spending increases in military and homeland security spending, the deficit would be about $200 billion worse than currently expected.

Click here to download the complete Iowa report in PDF format.

Click here to download the full analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.