Bush Outlines Health Spending Increases in Weekly Radio Address

The $1.9 trillion spending plan that President Bush is set to unveil next week contains both spending increases in several areas of health care and a reduction in some health initiatives introduced in the Clinton administration, the Washington Post reports. The Senate this week will vote on a budget resolution -- passed by the House last week -- that is "based on a more rudimentary spending outline that Bush sent to Congress a month ago." Bush is expected to reveal his specific spending plan next Monday (Goldstein/Kessler, Washington Post, 4/1). In his radio address Saturday, he outlined several health care funding increases that he has proposed:

• A 12% increase in funding for childhood disease research at the NIH;
• Funding for 1,200 new community health centers;
• A $22 million increase in CDC funding for the agency's childhood immunization program; and
• A $94 million increase for the Women, Infants and Children nutrition program (White House press release, 3/31).

The Cutting Room Floor
The Post reports that Bush has decided to "phase out" the 1999 "Community Access" program, which helps to promote cooperation between public hospitals and community health centers in tracking and caring for uninsured patients. In its place, the president has added "$124 million to finance community health centers and clinics for migrant workers." In addition, administration officials confirm that the spending plan calls for a reduction in subsidies for medical training at children's hospitals from $235 million to $200 million (Washington Post, 4/1).

What's the Rush?
A New York Times editorial criticizes Senate Republicans for addressing the president's proposed budget -- which includes his $1.6 trillion tax cut plan -- "with maximum hurry and minimal information." Calling the process by which the Senate is evaluating the budget resolution "ludicrous," the editorial notes that the president will submit his spending plan next week, "presumably" after the Senate adopts the resolution. This "rushed process," the editorial states, "suggests an awareness by Bush and the Republican Senate leadership that they need to pass a tax cut before Americans find out about it." Saying that "spending details are [the] enemy" of tax cut proponents, the editorial adds that "no documentation" of specific cuts has been offered by the administration, but it has been reported that they could affect children's health programs. Instead of "ram[ming] through an unfair, unaffordable tax cut," the editorial suggests that lawmakers "adopt a smaller immediate tax cut to stimulate the faltering economy, something for which there is broad bipartisan approval, and wait to see how the larger tax cut fits into Congress's spending plans on health, education and other pressing needs" (New York Times, 4/1).