Politics

Incoherent Conservatism

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

April 11, 2001 / 1:13 PM EDT / CBS

In his latest Against the Grain commentary, CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer takes a look at the Bush budget plan and finds some surprises.

President Bush says his budget reflects compassionate conservatism. Democrats, of course, say it's mean conservatism. But apart from the tax cut, it's not at all clear that this is even a conservative budget. To call this budget conservative is to make it sound more coherent and philosophically honest than it appears to be.

The first Bush budget has lots of surprises for traditional conservatives:

The largest funding increases, 72 percent, go to elementary, secondary and vocational education, though Republicans have long argued that the federal government should stay away from local schooling matters. (But giving education the largest percentage increases ensures that they will play prominently in news stories about the budget, thus furthering them marketing of the compassion message.)
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting gets a $10 million increase, even though movement conservatives rank it right up there with Hillary Clinton and Barbra Streisand on the enemies list.
Even the National Endowment for the Arts, another cell of the vast Left Wing Conspiracy, gets a tiny increase.
Foreign aid, perhaps Public Enemy Number One for the Jesse Helms crowd, gets an 8 percent raise of about $539 million.
Bill Clinton's favorite program, AmeriCorps, gets a 9 percent increase. Republicans thought it was a goner once Clinton hit the lecture and pardon circuit.

On the complete other hand Bush, a law-and-order Republican, takes away money for police by whacking another Clinton pet project, the COPS program that was supposed to put 100,000 more police on the street.

What this budget document does lack are huge impossible, symbolic "red meat" cuts and ferocious anti-government rhetoric. That's a little odd because budgets are equal parts propaganda and policy. The budgets of Ronald Reagan, Bush I and Newt Gingrich routinely called for the evisceration of whole agencies like Energy or Education or EPA, along with the ritual beheading of thousands of bureaucrats monthly. In this regard, the Bush budget may be more businesslike.

Still, there's plenty of ammo for Democrats and UnRepublicans, apart from the tax cut:

EPA's budget for scientific research into pollution prevention gets a 31 percent cut, from $383 million to $265 million.
A $161 million program intended to preserve habitat for endangered Pacific salmon is to be reduced by a third.
International nuclear weapons proliferation control is slated for an 18 percent cut.
The home energy assistance program for low-incomes people is to be cut by 32 percent.

The Bush budget, as they all do, contains a fair share of fuzzy math and outright flim-flam:

The budget adds $153 billion to Medicare over the next decade to pay for more prscription drug benefits, although Republican and Democratic experts believe the real cost is twice that. The latest calculation from the Republican controlled Congressional Budget Office estimates the prescription drug cost at $400 billion over the next 10 years.
Bush has ordered a full review of defense policy. He promised large increases for the Pentagon in his campaign, as well as a hugely expensive missile defense system. None of this is included in the budget.
CBS News Correspondent Stephanie Lambidakis reports that budget briefers made a big deal of funding increases for the department's civil rights division. But the fine print reveals that the increase comes from merely putting the budget for a program called, Violence Against Women on the civil rights division's books rather than another part of the department.
The budget assumes a 2001 growth rate of 2.4 percent, 3.3 percent in 2002, declining to just 3.1 in 2011. Cross your fingers and click your heels together.

There is also some legislative fantasy in the budget. The administration budget claims to increase "discretionary" spending for 2002 by 4 percent over 2001. Well, the Senate last week passed it's own budget and it will dictate the final spending as much as the president's. The Senate budget, inasmuch as it his been figured out yet, increases "discretionary" spending about 8 percent.

Translation: Congress will spend more than the president wants, making his cherished tax cuts appear less affordable. Bush thinks he can take jumbo slabs out of agriculture and transportation, the very vessels of life for many pork-barreling pols. It would be a first.

Remember passing budgets is what Washington does in the spring. But budgets are not actual laws; they are mere "resolutions." The real laws that govern federal spending are called appropriations and they happen in the fall, usually behind closed doors. This is where pork is served.

A recent congressional shows that legislators appropriated more in the fall than they budgeted in the spring in 17 of the last 19 years. It will certainly take a healthy dose of that "new way of doing business" that Bush talks about to alter this natural cycle.