Sometimes the top line isn't all it's cracked up to be:
Obama prevents budget cuts to favorite programs
WASHINGTON – A close look at the government shutdown-dodging agreement to cut federal spending by $38 billion reveals that lawmakers significantly eased the fiscal pain by pruning money left over from previous years, using accounting sleight of hand and going after programs President Barack Obama had targeted anyway.
Such moves permitted Obama to save favorite programs — Pell grants for poor college students, health research and "Race to the Top" aid for public schools, among others — from Republican knives.
Cross the jump for more key points--the cuts aren't nearly as bad as the $38 Billion make them sound...
The Tea Partiers are going to hate this stuff once they get into the details:
As a result of the legerdemain, Obama was able to reverse many of the cuts passed by House Republicans in February when the chamber passed a bill slashing this year's budget by more than $60 billion. In doing so, the White House protected favorites like the Head Start early learning program, while maintaining the maximum Pell grant of $5,550 and funding for Obama's "Race to the Top" initiative that provides grants to better-performing schools.
Obama also repelled Republican moves to cut $1 billion in grants for community health centers and $500 million from biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health, while blocking them from "zeroing out" the AmeriCorps national service program and subsidies for public broadcasting.
Instead, the cuts that actually will make it into law are far tamer, including cuts to earmarks, unspent census money, leftover federal construction funding, and $2.5 billion from the most recent renewal of highway programs that can't be spent because of restrictions set by other legislation. Another $3.5 billion comes from unused spending authority from a program providing health care to children of lower-income families.
About $10 billion of the cuts already have been enacted as the price for keeping the government open as negotiations progressed; lawmakers tipped their hand regarding another $10 billion or so when the House passed a spending bill last week that ran aground in the Senate.
For instance, the spending measure reaps $350 million by cutting a one-year program enacted in 2009 for dairy farmers then suffering from low milk prices. Another $650 million comes by not repeating a one-time infusion into highway programs passed that same year. And just last Friday, Congress approved Obama's $1 billion request for high-speed rail grants — crediting themselves with $1.5 billion in savings relative to last year.
The whole article is worth reading--there's even more that shows some pretty clever jiu-jitsu going on behind the scenes. On the one hand, it's depressing that all of this fighting didn't do more to actually reduce the deficit, but on the other hand, it's clear that this wasn't the one-sided 'cave-in' to the Republicans that so many have claimed.
I'm willing to wait to see what happens with the Administration's budget proposal later this week to see what we're really dealing with in terms of Obama's agenda--I think it might turn out that he's a little more on our side than some here have given him credit for of late...
[Edited to change the title to something less inflammatory (I hope :)]