Proposed FY07 federal budget
	March 2006 How will we cut the pie? More guns, less butter. And housing. And aid to states and localities... Here are some links to some of the best analyses out there.

Extra! Extra! Special edition of our e-News Bulletin all about the federal budget! Yeehaw! We're havin' fun now.

* Take action here: Tell Congress to change the federal budget priorities; direct money away from the Pentagon, toward human needs. * 2006 Congressional Schedule * WAND Legislative Priorities 2006

The federal budget is more than a lot of numbers: it determines a whole lot about what happens in our country.

Janaury 2006: Yep, after months of political wrangling, Congress finally came close to passing the budget for FY06 just before the Christmas/Holiday recess. (The fiscal year ends in October, so the government was funded by a continuing resolution for the last couple months there). Read more about the budget.

February 2006: President Bush just released his proposed federal budget for FY07, and it reveals a lot about his priorities. There's less money for programs that serve most marginal people in our country: poor, elderly, ill; and more money for programs like new nuclear weapons and missile defense. And the tax cuts continue to favor the wealthiest among us.

Many individuals and organizations are asking if this is what we are all about as a country; and are offering detailed critiques of the budget proposal. We hope you'll take the time to find out more.

This is our budget; shouldn't it reflect our priorities?

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Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation
Click to enlarge.

Highlights of the Fiscal Year 2007 Pentagon Spending Request
U.S. Military Spending vs. the World

From the Coalition on Human Needs
The President's Scandalous Budget

From the National Women's Law Center
Women and Children Last - Again


The Bush Administration's FY 2007 Budget

From the Child Welfare League of America
FY 2007 Bush Budget and Children

From the Center for American Progress
Setting the Wrong Priorities
"Enacting the president's budget would result in (1) massive deficits, (2) cuts to services and investments vital to long-run growth, and (3) an increasingly unfair tax policy."

From OMB Watch
Initial Analyses of the President's 2007 Budget

From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
A Preliminary Analysis

Washington Post
Many Proposed Cuts Have Met Limited Success in the Past
"In a climate of record budget deficits and pressure from fiscal conservatives to rein in spending, the White House is drawing attention to what Budget Director Joshua B. Bolten has termed "a vigorous policy of spending restraint" in parts of the government unrelated to security. "We think there are a lot of programs that can be either taken out altogether or very substantially dialed down," Bolten said on Monday, as the White House proposed its $2.77 trillion spending plan for the fiscal year that begins in October."

FCNL
Federal Budget Choices: State Security or Human Security Imperatives?
“Long War” Plans Fall from Pentagon on Capitol

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Preliminary Analysis of the President's Budget
President's Budget Would Cut Food for over 420,000 Low-Income Seniors
Domestic Funding Continues to Shrink

Children's Defense Fund
Budget Full of Woes for Children

• True Majority illustrates the budget in Oreos (yes, the cookie)
  Once again, our federal budget spends too much on the wrong things and not enough on the right ones. But it doesn't have to be that way!
  See the video here.

• Budget Resolution: establishes overall ceiling for spending for the Pentagon and other agencies (Senate and House Budget Committees).
• Defense Authorization Bill: establishes program-by-program ceilings (Senate and House Armed Services Committee)
• Defense Appropriations Bill: provides funding to pay for programs (Senate and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittees).
• Energy and Water Appropriations Bill: provides funding for nuclear weapons programs (Senate and House Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittees).
• Supplemental Appropriations Bill: funding requested outside the normal authorization and appropriations process (Senate and House Defense Appropriations Subcommittees).
• Continuing Resolution: A bill to provide temporary funding early in a fiscal year when Congress has not completed funding on appropriations bills.

Definitions
Authorization: telling your child that he/she can have $1,000 to spend at college.
Appropriation: sending a $1,000 check to the student
Outlays: the student spending the money.

January 2006
The FY06 budget: just what you'd expect.

In the early morning hours of December 19, the House of Representatives passed the budget reconciliation bill by a vote of 212-206. The Coalition on Human Needs reports that the budget deal includes the following cuts:

• Medicaid: Low-income families will have to pay more than they can afford for medical care under Medicaid and face shrinking benefits.
• SSI: People with disabilities will have to wait as long as a year to receive the back SSI benefits they are owed because the government has taken so long to approve their application.
• Child Support: Children will be deprived of $2.9 billion over 5 years/$8.4 billion over 10 years in child support not collected because of cuts in enforcement.
• Foster Care: Grandparents or other relatives in certain states will lose foster care assistance.
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: The agreement assumes that work requirements will be made more harsh and expects states to fail – and so estimates that states will pay penalties to the federal government. The Congressional Budget Office expects that states will in turn create harsher penalties for poor families, causing more to lose benefits.
• Child Care: CBO estimates that it will cost $12.5 billion in new funding to pay for the harsher work requirements and to keep up with the costs of providing existing child care. The budget deal only provides $1 billion – a gap of $11.5 billion.
• Student Loans: Cut $12.7 billion over 5 years.