White House lists cuts made in budget deal

The White House on Saturday released some details of the budget deal that congressional leaders agreed to late Friday.

The information was delivered in a blog post on the White House website, which also pushed the administration’s message that the spending compromises made by all sides would add up to a victory for all involved. 

“This deal cuts spending by $78.5 billion from the President’s FY 2011 Budget request — the largest annual spending cut in our history,” Dan Pfieffer, the president’s communications director, wrote. “These are real cuts that will save taxpayers money and have a real impact. Many will be painful, and are to programs that we support, but the fiscal situation is such that we have to act.”

The blog post then detailed some of the spending cuts:

• $13 billion from funding for programs at the Departments of Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services
• over $1 billion in a cut across non-defense agencies
• reductions to housing assistance programs and some health care programs
• $8 billion in cuts to our budget for State and Foreign Operations
• $630 million in earmarked transportation projects
• at least $2.5 billion in transportation funding that is ready to be earmarked
• $35 million by ending the Crop Insurance Good Performance Rebate
• $30 million for a job training program that was narrowly targeted at certain student loan processors
• $18 billion in cuts deemed unnecessary by the Pentagon

The White House then identified funding for programs it had “protected” in the budget deal:

• current levels of Head Start enrollment, funding Race to the Top
• maintain the Pell Grant maximum award
• robust investment to efficiently and effectively run Medicare and to implement the Affordable Care Act
• strong investments in National Institute of Standards and Technology, National Science Foundation and the Office of Science

The deal was agreed to just before midnight on Friday and prevented a government shutdown. The details of the agreement will be finalized by Congress in the coming week.

Both houses of Congress passed, and the president signed, another short-term continuing resolution to keep the government running until April 15.