By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - No more federal money for police on the streets. More guards protecting schools. No additional money to help people pay their energy bills. Instead, more money for home insulation to conserve energy.
Those are some of the effects of President Bush's proposed budget.
Students could benefit under the plan, which calls for the hiring of 1,500 school guards next fiscal year - more than twice the number this year. That would be enough to put at least one guard in a small fraction of the roughly 87,000 public schools nationwide.
The funding for that program comes from a more than $1 billion reduction in law enforcement assistance across government, including more than $200 million from the Community Oriented Police Services program. The Clinton-era initiative was meant to put 100,000 new police officers on patrol.
Essentially, Bush is proposing an end to federal subsidies for new police officers and telling communities that want them to dig deeper into their own budgets to pay the officers' salaries.
The budget continues funding for school resource officers under the COPS program.
At least one school official said the shift made sense.
"I could never understand why we didn't have officers patrolling schools when we know we have schools with crime," said Curtis Lavarello, executive director of the National Association of School Resource Officers. "I think you'll see that (1,500) number increasing."
The spending increase comes after several deadly shootings in or outside of schools this year alone, including separate incidents last month in Santee, Calif., and Gary, Ind.
The budget blueprint could have other effects, too, as people would have to begin paying for some Small Business Administration services now provided by the government.
The SBA's budget would drop to $539 million next fiscal year, from $899.5 million this year, "but hardly anything is getting cut," said spokesman Mike Stamler.
That's because the president's plan shifts funding for some SBA programs, including some loan and counseling programs, from government coffers to user fees, he said.
Bush's budget also includes more aid to help low-income people make their homes energy efficient. It would provide grants for 116,000 homes for such improvements as insulation, more than twice the number this year.
But the plan requests no spending increase for a federal program that has helped millions of eligible households afford to heat or cool their homes. The president's budget holds funding for the program steady at $1.7 billion.
On the other hand, the Bush priority of education gets a boost.
Spending at the Education Department would rise by $4.6 billion, the largest increase of any department, providing significant increases for charter schools and helping states develop reading and math assessment programs, meeting two of the president's campaign promises.
Bush's budget also includes the broad tax cuts he promised during the campaign, including lower income tax rates for everyone and an eventual doubling of the child tax credit to $1,000.
Poor families without health insurance provided by an employer or the government would get a tax credit worth up to $2,000 per year, when the plan is fully implemented, to buy coverage.
More than $1 billion would come from the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Bush cancels a $309 million anti-drug program, reasoning that other federal agencies are better equipped for that effort. An additional $700 million is slashed from a capital fund for public housing because of billions of dollars in unspent funds from previous years.
