Bush doing the opposite of SOTU promises...today!

From the NY Times:

February 1, 2006
Congress Narrowly Approves $39 Billion in Budget Cuts
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
WASHINGTON, Feb. 1

House Republicans, handing a close-fought victory to President Bush on the heels of his State of the Union address, pushed through a measure today to rein in spending by nearly $40 billion over the next five years, with cuts in student loans, crop subsidies and Medicaid, the government's health insurance program for the poor.

The bill, approved 216 to 214, largely along party lines, is the first major attempt in eight years to curb what is known as entitlement spending, referring to the programs that pay benefits to anyone who meets certain eligibility criteria.

President Bush, who has made controlling the growth of government spending one of his signature domestic issues, has promised to sign it.

But while the measure has strong appeal to the fiscal conservatives who make up the president's Republican base, the cuts in social welfare programs are making Republican moderates nervous.
One centrist Republican, Representative Rob Simmons of Connecticut, announced he was switching his vote and opposing the measure after intense lobbying from advocacy groups over the holiday break.

Coming on the eve of Republican leadership elections in the House, the vote was a critical test for Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri, who as Republican whip was responsible for rounding up the votes necessary for passage. Mr. Blunt is also acting majority leader — a job he hopes to make permanent during the leadership elections Thursday — and the victory on the budget bill gave him a nice wind at his back going into that race.

The bill would cut the growth of education spending by more than $16 billion between 2006 and 2010, and make reductions in the spending on Medicaid and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, as well. Republicans cast it as an important step toward restraining programs that, they said, would gobble up the entire federal budget if left unchecked.

But with the Senate taking up a tax-cutting measure at the same time, Democrats sounded what will be a prominent election year theme: that Republicans were cutting taxes for the rich at the expense of services for the poor. And at a time when Congress is consumed by a lobbying scandal, Democrats also complained bitterly that the measure was written without them, behind closed doors with the help of paid representatives from the drug and insurance industries.

"This is a product of special interest lobbying," said Representative John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat, who is the longest-serving member of the House, "and the stench of special interests hangs over the chamber as we consider it today."

The budget-cutting bill is actually a holdover from last year; it first passed the House in late December in an all-night marathon session. The vote was 212 to 206, with 9 Republicans joining 196 Democrats and one independent in opposition. The bill then went to the Senate, which made a few minor changes, forcing the House to reconsider it when it came back into session this week.

Those tweaks, and the resulting delay, gave organizations like the AARP, which represents retirees, and Americans United, a progressive advocacy group that fought Mr. Bush's plan to revamp Social Security, ample time to mount an aggressive campaign against the cuts, and they did.

Brad Woodhouse, a spokesman for Americans United, said his group ran more than 300 events around the country during the Congressional winter recess "to create the type of wave we created against the privatization plan." John Rother, the policy director for AARP, said his group produced print advertisements and focused on members of Congress like Mr. Simmons, who are in swing districts.

Wrap...