Editorials

It has frequently been noted that people on the lower end of the income scale do not come out as well under budgets crafted by the Bush administration as do citizens whose incomes put them well above the national average.

In this regard, the budget recently submitted to Congress by President Bush is like the ones that came before it.

Because so many Alabamians fall into the low-income category, it follows that Alabama will again be hit hard by what the White House has proposed.

For example, the Bush budget calls for a 41 percent cut in vocational and adult education, programs which have helped train people for jobs and for a better life. When this measure is applied to Alabama, an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Concerns reveals that the state will lose some $15.1 million. Similar calculations indicate that in Alabama, Head Start — the federal government's successful pre-school program- will lose $3.6 million.

Put in human terms, that means a lot of young children from impoverished circumstances will not get the introduction to education that will prepare them for school. Nationally, Low-Income Home Energy Assistance will be cut 19.1 percent, which means that in Alabama the program will lose $3.6 million that would have helped the poor pay for heating and air-conditioning.

These are not the only grants affected.

Why the reductions?

Because if the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, there will not be money for such undertakings. Nor will there be money in the future, as additional cuts will be required to balance the budget by 2012 — the president's stated goal.

That deadline, which few analysts feel is realistic, will not have to be met by George W. Bush. He will leave that promise, along with the promises of a democratic Iraq and of energy independence, to his successor.

That is, unless the Democrats who control Congress begin acting like Democrats are supposed to act. The new congressional majority needs to take this budget, throw out the permanent tax cuts that favor the well-to-do and rewrite it so that the people most in need of government assistance get that help. Then they should take a serious look at the foreign policy follies that are draining the Treasury and begin to trim back those excesses.

Meanwhile Republicans, those whose constituents also are disillusioned with the direction the president is taking us, should make a better budget a bipartisan effort.