President’s 2007 Budget Decimates Student Loans and Arts Education

March 1, 2006

President Bush has proposed massive cuts to Arts and Education funding, including $12 billion in cuts to Student Loans, $3.7 billion in cuts to the Department of Education, and the elimination of forty-two educational programs—such as Perkins Loans, spending on vocational education, and arts programs. The president’s budget reduced the US Department of Education’s Arts-in-education programs from $35.3 million to no funding at all.

And yet, even with these cuts, because of the President’s insistence to make permanent his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, the President’s 2007 budget would produce one of the largest nominal deficits in the nation’s history—$423 billion, or $1,400 in new debt for every single man, woman, and child in America.

Massive costs associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have simply been left out of the budget after 2007. The deficit for FY 2007 is $423 billion.

This would be the sixth consecutive year that President Bush has produced a budget in deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars.  Except for 2001, President Bush’s first year in office, when the government was still enjoying the effects of the previous administration’s record surplus––President Bush will leave office in 2008 without ever having balanced the annual budget.

Whoever wins the election in 2008 will inherit a national debt that has increased by $2 trillion in the last five years alone, with budget deficits exploding after 2009, just when the country faces a potential financial crisis from retiring baby boomers. According to OMB Watch––and President Bush’s own budget numbers––the national debt will increase by $3.9 trillion by 2011––a 46% increase since 2005. That would force the administration to raise the total national debt to $8.18 trillion.

That’s $8,180,000,000,000.00. Interest payments on the federal debt will be $243.7 billion for FY 2007 alone. The US is making foreign banks rich, while it cuts social services to the poor and middle class here at home.

The President’s budget faced immediate, bipartisan criticism, with protests coming from both Republicans and Democrats. Republican Senator Arlen Specter (PA) called Bush’s proposed cuts in education and health “scandalous,” while Republican Olympia Snow (ME) said she was “disappointed and even surprised” by some of the proposed cuts.

Democratic Senator Max Baucus (MT) said the explosion of federal deficits was adding to the national debt, and increasing the finance charges the United States must pay to foreign countries.

“America is borrowing 80 percent of the world’s annual savings. We are handing our children and our children’s children a set of obligations they will owe to foreign central banks,” said Baucus.

For more information on the impact of President Bush’s proposals on higher education and arts education, visit:

Americans for the Arts
www.capwiz.com/artsusa/home

OMB Watch
www.ombwatch.org

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
www.cbpp.org

AWP eLink
www.elink.awpwriter.org


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