Surgical strike

Politics | President's budget applies the first knife domestic spending has felt in years | Bob Jones

If new cabinet members felt more than the usual butterflies during their first meeting with President Bush on Feb. 7, they had good reason. Mr. Bush used the West Wing photo op to promote his "lean" budget for 2006, vowing that discretionary spending next year would grow more slowly than the rate of inflation. In fact, domestic programs not related to national security or mandated by law will actually see a 1 percent decline if the president gets his way—something that hasn't happened since the Reagan administration.

From Margaret Spellings at Education to Donald Rumsfeld at Defense, Cabinet secretaries returned to their offices with grim news for the hordes of bureaucrats accustomed to ever-bigger budgets. Though the president has little say over congressionally mandated programs ranging from Medicare to the September 11th Victims Compensation Fund, he applied the knife almost everywhere he could, requesting net decreases in discretionary funding for nine out of 15 Cabinet-level departments. ("Total outlays," the budget figure that includes mandatory spending, will continue to rise in most departments.)