SWEENEY CALLS BUSH BUDGET
‘IDEOLOGICALLY DRIVEN, ILL-CONCEIVED’

President George W. Bush’s proposed $3.1 trillion spending plan for the year starting Oct. 1 is “a slap in the face” to workers “who are struggling to get by” while being “ideologically driven and ill-conceived,” AFL-CIO President John J. Sweeney said.

Sweeney particularly criticized Bush’s plan to make his tax cuts for the rich permanent “while cutting crucial programs for the most vulnerable: The elderly, the poor, the sick, youth, and displaced workers.

“He offers recycled versions of Right-Wing pet programs: Health savings accounts, career advancement accounts, and school vouchers,” Sweeney added, citing a Bush proposal--one of the few new proposals in the spending plan--for $300 million for a national voucher plan.

And Sweeney noted Bush wants to cut funding for paying for the medical ills of the “first responders” to 9/11 by 77%, to $25 million.

Bush “often talks of preparing workers to meet the challenges of competing in the global economy, but Bush's proposed budget contains more than $760 million in cuts for job training and employment programs, including training programs for dislocated workers, young people, Native Americans, and migrant and seasonal farmworkers, as well as senior citizen community service employment. Cutting training programs during an economic downturn is both bad economics and bad social policy,” Sweeney added.

AFT President Ed McElroy also criticized seven years of bad Bush fiscal policies. “The best thing about this budget is that it is his last,” McElroy said, hitting the “fiscal hole” Bush left the nation in.

“The budget provides inadequate increases to Title I” money to poor school kids “and special education, yet diverts $300 million to a new, unproven national voucher program and adds more than $100 million to a flawed teacher pay plan (the Teacher Incentive Fund),” AFT added in a background statement.

“Overall, the budget essentially freezes domestic discretionary funding at current levels, which will result in cuts to most services after taking inflation and population growth into account,” the union warns.