Funds for Maine in fine print

WASHINGTON – Cold? Weatherization funds should be boosted $1.4 billion over the next decade.

Wondering about that next snowstorm? President Bush wants to put up a new, $83 million next-generation polar-orbiting satellite to monitor the weather.

Worried about prescription drugs? Cancer? Or helping that kid down the block get access to a drug rehabilitation program? The money is there. A new Medicaid benefits package is on the table, a major increase in the National Institutes of Health for research of all kinds, and funds for a variety of substance abuse efforts are on the rise.

But looking at the $1.96 trillion federal budget outline released by President Bush and trying to assess its direct impact on Maine is akin to the needle-in-the-haystack proverb. It’s there, buried in the $660 billion in discretionary spending – you just have to find it.

There probably will be no specific good news for Bath Iron Works, but a new military shipbuilding program is in the works. Nor will there likely be anything for specialized industry subsidies – corporate welfare, some call it – which is also set to dissipate.

But the fine print may help fisheries managers, since the administration acknowledges that there are “significant resource management challenges” associated with fish stocks. And while funding is trimmed for the Coastal Impact Assistance Fund, some of the program will be melded into the Coastal Zone Management Act grants program.

If the president has his way, that is.

It may take several months before the administration fleshes out the rough outline, filling in details that may be eclipsed by a Republican-led Congress primed to work fast with one of their own in the White House, fine-tuning and reshaping the proposal virtually before the ink has dried.

As with most presidential budgets, the fiscal 2002 offering is designed to set the tone of the debate – calling for tax cuts, more energy resources, big new bucks for education, and a serious effort to pay down the debt.

“Our new approach is compassionate,” Bush said in announcing the budget package. “This new approach is also responsible.” Sounding as if he belonged to neither political party, Bush said that for too long, “politics in Washington has been divided between those who wanted big government without regard to cost and those who wanted small government without regard to need. Too often the result has been too few needs met at too high a cost.”

But from the early reviews – almost to no one’s surprise – the Republicans are for it, and the Democrats are more skeptical.

Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, a Republican, said she supports the tax cut idea, calling it a “sound foundation.”

Rep. John E. Baldacci, a Democrat, was more critical.

“These are projected figures, and the $1.6 trillion tax cut is a large amount to still give priority to health care, Social Security and Medicare,” said Baldacci.

Many of the details won’t be released by the White House until April. This budget was actually crafted by bureaucrats in the Clinton administration and the Clinton Office of Management and Budget. It was scrubbed by the new administration to change the things that made a difference to the new chief executive, with much of the rest still in place, at least for now. It comes with Bush’s special touch, a bit of that Goldilocks-and-the-Three-Bears pledge the president gave in his speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night that contends his tax cut, for example, was neither too big nor too small, but “just right.”

For now, the White House is confident that Capitol Hill will support its proposal.

Another key aspect of Bush’s proposed budget is education, which has the most significant increase.

Bush’s education reform package includes raising state standards, holding schools accountable for low achievement levels; encouraging local control of education; and giving parents choices of schools and education funding.

Head Start, a program directed at low-income families with preschoolers, would be shifted to the Department of Education from the Department of Health and Human Services, allow the program to become more closely linked with education priorities involving reading and math.

The president also wants to require report cards for schools, to fund more charter schools, and to increase tax relief available to families saving for college.

The hot-button issues such as using vouchers to allow public school students to be shifted to private schools didn’t appear, although the convoluted language of the “blueprint” said parents with children in failing schools “will have the option of transferring to another public school … or using their share of federal Title I funds to seek supplemental educational services or private school alternatives.”

The budget blueprint calls for increasing funds for special education under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, but no numbers were given. Education Secretary Roderick R. Paige, earlier this week at the National Governors’ Association winter meeting, was hit hard on the matter and came up with an equally ill-defined answer.

The law, passed in 1975, calls for the federal government to pay for 40 percent of education costs for special education, but Congress has never appropriated that much, leaving one of the largest unfunded federal mandates – and a thorn in the side of many states. The federal government now pays for only about 15 percent of special education funding, according to Baldacci’s office.

Maine’s delegation seemed united Wednesday in having the federal government hit the full 40 percent mark as a central component of new education funding, especially in an administration that avows no child should be left behind.

Baldacci said he would be co-sponsoring legislation seeking an increase. Collins and Snowe indicated they’d pursue similar initiatives in the Senate.

“There are no specifics in his blueprint regarding increasing funding for special education, an issue I will continue to push with the administration,” said Collins.

Collins said that if the federal government did meet its 40 percent requirement, nearly $70 million would be saved by Maine that could be used for other educational programs.