President Bush submitted his eighth and final budget to Congress in early February.  Once again, his budget overwhelmingly ignores the needs and priorities of working Americans.  The Bush FY 2009 budget preserves expensive tax cuts for the wealthy and boosts military spending dramatically, while cutting crucial programs for the most vulnerable Americans: children, the elderly, the poor, and the sick.[1]  The President continues to propose major cuts in domestic appropriations and entitlements over the next five years, starting with $23 billion in FY 2009, and totaling a massive $474 billion in cuts over five years.[2]

Even though unemployment is on the rise and the economy shows signs of faltering, the President’s budget contains over $1 billion in cuts for job training and employment security programs.  Job training programs for dislocated workers, young people, Native Americans, and migrant and seasonal farmworkers, as well as senior citizen community service employment programs, would all suffer major cuts.

President Bush proposes some reforms and a modest increase in funding for the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program, but both his reforms and his budget request fall far short of the expanded and improved TAA bill approved by a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives.  President Bush vowed to veto the House bill.

The state economies are having trouble, too.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, half of the state governments face budget shortfalls for FY 2009, with the total budget shortfall for 20 of these states reaching $34 billion.[3]  These shortfalls are partly the result of the downturn in the housing market, which has affected sales and property tax collections.  A recession will also result in lowered income tax revenue for state governments.[4]  However, instead of proposing additional assistance to the states, President Bush plans instead to do the opposite; his FY 2009 budget proposes $18.9 billion in cuts to grants to state and local governments (non-Medicaid funding), representing a 7.4 percent cut from the previous fiscal year.[5]  

With 47 million[6] Americans lacking health insurance coverage and millions more with coverage but struggling to meet rising costs, the Bush tax proposal would actually make those who have coverage pay more, while providing no real help for the uninsured.  Unconscionably, the proposed budget would also cut more than $196 billion[7] over five years from Medicare and Medicaid, shift more costs to the states, and limit eligibility for children who now receive coverage under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

With his budget, the President has turned his back on the brave men and women who responded to the 9/11 attacks at the World Trade Center.  Thousands of these workers are now sick, many are disabled and some have died.  These workers desperately need medical care, but the President's budget would slash funding for the World Trade Center Medical Screening and treatment program by 77 percent -- from $108 million to just $25 million.

The President's budget also puts other workers at greater risk.  Funding for the occupational safety and health research agency NIOSH would be cut 10 percent.  At the Department of Labor, a small increase in funding is requested for the federal enforcement program for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, but the worker safety and health training program would be eliminated. And the budget proposes to reduce funding for coal mine safety enforcement and for the development of new mine safety standards, at a time when coal mine catastrophes continue and when the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) is failing to meet legal deadlines for issuing new protective standards.

Aside from defense spending, the other major area in which President Bush does want to spend money is tax cuts for the wealthy.  He proposes once again to make permanent the enormous tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 – cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the very rich.  According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the cost of providing these tax cuts over the five year period covered in the budget would equal $900 billion – nearly twice the amount Bush requests for cuts in domestic appropriations and entitlements ($474 billion).[8]  Tax cuts for households with more than $1 million in income would cost taxpayers $61 billion in FY 2009, more than four times the amount of money he wants to cut ($15 billion) in FY 2009 funds for discretionary non-entitlement programs.[9] 

While the very rich would benefit enormously, the typical household in America would receive very little from these tax cuts.  By FY 2012, the first year in which the extension of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts would be fully phased in, average households with more than $1 million in income would receive $162,000.  Meanwhile, households in the middle 20 percent of the income scale would receive an average of $840, and households in the bottom 20 percent would receive an average of only $45.[10] 

Over the next ten years, the total cost of the Bush tax cuts would be $2.4 trillion.[11] Tax cuts for the rich should not be financed by increased deficits and cuts in much-needed programs in health care, worker training, and health and safety.  Once again the Bush budget simply does not work for America’s working men and women.  The following sections address the effects of the budget on a range of programs vitally important to workers and their families.