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Yahoo! News is carrying a list of the program cuts Bush wants to do here.

Behind the cut, you’ll find my analysis of some of these cuts, as well as, page by page, from different departments. I’ll be the first to say that I don’t know much about most of the programs, but I’ll start with the department I’m most familiar with, education.

Here is a list of the programs Bush wants to cut in the department of education, programs which are bolded denotes that he has targeted this program before.

Comprehensive school reform
Educational technology state grants
Even Start

(High school program terminations:)
Vocational education state grants
Vocational education national activities
Tech prep state grants
Upward Bound
Talent Search
GEAR UP
Smaller learning communities
Perkins Loans: capital contributions and loan cancellations
Regional education laboratories
Safe and Drug Free Schools state grants

(Small elementary and secondary education programs:)
Javits gifted and talented education
National Writing Project
School leadership
Dropout prevention program
Close Up fellowships
Ready to Teach
Parental information and resource centers
Alcohol abuse reduction
Foundations for Learning
Mental health integration in schools
Community technology centers
Exchanges with historic whaling and trading partners
Foreign language assistance
Excellence in economic education
Arts in education
Women’s educational equity
Elementary and secondary school counseling
Civic education
Star schools

(Smaller higher education programs:)
Higher education demonstration projects for students w/disabilities
Underground railroad program
Interest subsidy grants

(Small job training and adult education programs:)
Occupational and employment information
Tech-prep demonstration
Literacy programs for prisoners x
State grants for incarcerated youth

(Small postsecondary student financial assistance programs:)
LEAP
Byrd scholarships
B.J. Stupak Olympic scholarships
Thurgood Marshall legal opportunity

(Small vocational rehabilitation programs:)
Vocational rehabilitation recreational programs
Vocational rehabilitation migrant and seasonal workers
Projects with industry
Supported employment
Teacher quality enhancement program

That is an awful lot of educational programs. With No Child Left Behind still a major part of Bush’s platform I don’t know how he expects to accomplish anything. He is cutting afterschool, before school, arts and various other programs, taking away some kids best chance at success.

Outside of the basic elementary and secondary education cuts, he’s also proposing cuts to programs that benefit teachers, helping them to improve at their vocation. In addition he is also cutting “second chance” programs that might be the only oppurtunity for a convicted felon to become a law-abiding contributing member of society.

Eliminating elementary and secondary school counseling, if it is what I think it is, then you are leaving our nations young people with even less options of adults to confide to, to turn to for advice. You are taking away the ability of schools to help children make a smooth transission from child, to adolescent, to adult.

His cuts, though perhaps necissary to further his other agenda items, such as cutting taxes, slice deeper than necissary, and in a manner to harm the country more down the road, than a temporarily struggling economy is going to produce.

If a great deal of these cuts go through, which is a very real possibility in the Republican controlled congress, then we are going to fall even further behind other industrialized nations in our state provided educational programs. We will ultimately produce more inept adults, who were left behind because they were not provided the oppurtunities these programs provide, and no amount of test, as required by No Child Left Behind is going to fix that. Taking money away from underperforming schools is not going to fix that, quite the opposite will happen. Those underperforming schools will continue to underperform and be sent in a downward spiral based on budget cuts, forcing educators to be let go as the money to pay them dries up.

Anyway, the remainder of the budget cuts reside on the following

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