Bush budget would slash aid to state
Education, healthcare could suffer
WASHINGTON -- Massachusetts would lose hundreds of millions of dollars in education, health, and other federal assistance under President Bush's $2.7 trillion budget plan announced yesterday.
Bush's plan, which cuts social programs to preserve deficit targets while raising military spending, would cost Massachusetts schools more than $20 million in vocational education grants. Almost 40 communities across the state could lose out on federal funding for affordable housing.
Meanwhile, cuts in Medicare payments would result in the loss of $213 million in reimbursements for Massachusetts hospitals over five years, according to legislators and budget documents.
Federal subsidies, which help families heat homes in winter, would be scaled back by $500 million, and a proposed 30 percent cut in Amtrak's subsidies could force it to eliminate 280 of 915 jobs based in Massachusetts, according to Bush's proposal and the state's congressional delegation.
''When President Bush gave me guidance on what the 2007 budget should look like, he directed me to focus on national priorities and tighten our belt elsewhere," Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at a briefing yesterday. The emphasis on national security and permanent tax cuts, Bolten said, forced the White House to engage in ''aggressively restraining spending."
But the budget cuts would have a long-term effect on Massachusetts.
''The cuts in education, health programs, and research hurt our world-class schools, companies, and research institutions that are the source of so much of our economic growth," said Senator Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat.
Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island, added: ''While the budget has appropriately invested in national security, it unfortunately leaves our citizens behind here at home."
As stipulated by law, the overall budget plan was forwarded to Congress, where committees in the House and Senate will begin poring over the funding requests for each of the executive-branch agencies.
The process will culminate later this year, with appropriations bills adopted by both bodies that are likely to include numerous changes to the president's version of the plan.
In the largest cut in the Education Department's 26-year history, the budget slashes more than $1 billion by eliminating 40 federal programs. It freezes a variety of grants to school districts at $12.7 billion. That step is expected to reduce funding for 29 states, including Massachusetts, where an estimated 54,000 students are viewed as likely to be affected.
Those grants include money for schools to acquire state-of-the art technology, which brought $4 million to Massachusetts classrooms last year.
The elimination of the Safe and Drug Free School program, meanwhile, would deprive the state of $6.4 million, according to Bay State lawmakers. The proposal to end the Even Start family literacy effort would effectively end 24 programs in communities throughout the state, at an estimated cost of $1.3 million, according to lawmakers.
As for higher education, the president's budget terminates the Perkins Loan program for college aid, and freezes Pell Grants under $5,000 for the fifth year in a row -- even though college tuition has soared by an average of 46 percent in that period. More than 72,000 Pell Grant recipients in Massachusetts would receive no increase in aid, according to aides for the state's congressional delegation.
The budget also shuts down a grant subsidy plan that helps universities to enroll low-income students, an $800 million program that has benefited dozens of colleges in Massachusetts.
Proposed cuts in health spending also would have an effect on the region's residents.
The president's budget proposes deep cuts in healthcare programs, including trimming nearly $105 billion over the next 10 years from Medicare payments to hospitals and nursing homes.
Next year, those cuts would amount to $14 million in funding to Massachusetts hospitals, $11 million in inpatient care and $3 million in outpatient care, according to an analysis of the budget prepared by Kennedy's staff. Meanwhile, the state's home health agencies would lose an additional $10 million in 2007 under the president's budget plan, Kennedy's office said.
Nationwide, the proposal also eliminates at least 15 federal health programs, including emergency care for children and newborn hearing screening, and makes cuts to the Health Resources Services Administration, which trains healthcare professionals to meet the needs of special and underserved populations.
Needy families who rely on the federal government to help cover the increasing costs of home heating oil would not get as much help next winter, according to the budget plan. The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps some of New England's poorest families stay warm, would be slashed by $500 million to $1.78 billion.
The budget calls for cutting the federal Food Stamps program by almost $2 billion, and restricts eligibility. That move, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected, would drop about 250,000 people from the program. The budget also proposes ending the Commodity Supplemental Food program, which provides packages of nutritious food to low-income seniors in 32 states -- an average of about 400,000 people a month.
The budget cuts more than $800 million from job-training programs nationwide, making it more difficult for the estimated 165,000 workers unemployed in Massachusetts to receive job training.
''This budget hurts America's seniors, veterans, students, and working poor," Senator John F. Kerry said in a statement. ''It undermines the values of compassion, community, and responsibility that define the best of America."
Massachusetts lawmakers have also vowed to fight the Pentagon's decision to eliminate an alternate engine for the Joint Strike Fighter, the military's next-generation warplane, that they fear could cost defense-industry jobs in Massachusetts.
The backup engine for the fighter is being developed jointly by Lynn-based
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Bryan Bender can be reached at bender@globe.com. 