The Homeless Schools The Elderly		Veterans Families The Unemployed

Illustrations by Christoph Hitz

In the summer of 2000, George W. Bush the candidate promised to be something new on the Washington landscape. Bush promised to combine fiscal conservativism with social conscience. He promised to put the nation's needy -- the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the elderly, children, and veterans -- at the top of his agenda. He vowed to revitalize public education and prop up struggling families.

Over the past three years, however, George W. Bush the president has introduced budget proposals which, time and again, fail to do any of those things. He has cut or underfunded programs which aim to help the very people he vowed to champion. While discretionary spending has increased -- faster under Bush than at any time under President Clinton -- dozens of small, little-noticed programs benefiting the nation's most needy have been placed at risk.

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Some of the programs found on Bush's budgetary chopping block -- like the Social Services Block Grant or the Child Care and Development Block Grant -- are sufficiently large to have attracted at least some media attention. And administration officials have been unable to deflect questions about the president's decision to underfund the central element of his own education reform initiative, the Leave No Child Behind Act. But most of the programs falling prey to Bush's budget axe have been small -- amounting to tiny fractions of overall federal spending. He has proposed cutting funding for vocational education, after-school programs, nursing home care for veterans, child abuse prevention, and even job training.

Bush has also proposed merging some existing programs -- such as the Children's Health Insurance Program and Medicaid -- and converting others -- such as Section 8 Housing Vouchers -- into block grants to be administered by the states. Administration officials claim such a change will provide greater flexibility, allowing states to direct the money where it is most needed. Critics note that the shift places a new burden on fiscally-strapped states struggling to support the programs they already run.

So where is the compassion in Bush's budgets? Well, while cutting funding for proven programs, Bush has called for unprecedented federal support for faith-based alternatives. He has proposed tens of millions for a federal faith-based initiative, and has called for money in existing grants to be made available to existing faith-based programs. But no administration official has explained how faith-based organizations will fill the gaps created by Bush's budgets.