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President Bush plans to propose a $2.7 trillion budget Monday that would shrink most parts of the government unrelated to national security while slowing spending on Medicare by $36 billion during the next five years, according to White House documents.
The budget that Bush is to recommend to Congress will call for eliminating or reducing 141 programs, for a savings of $14.5 billion, across a broad swath of federal agencies, according to administration and congressional officials who have had access to budget documents. Wide-ranging as they are, those cuts pale in comparison with the White House's attempt to carve money from Medicare, the first tangible result from a vow the president made in his State of the Union address last week to constrain the massive entitlement programs for the elderly and poor.
In contrast, the president plans to recommend for the Department of Homeland Security an increase of at least 5 percent from this year's funding, $30.8 billion. The White House is also trying again to increase passengers' security fees for air travel from $2.50 per flight to $5, a proposal that Congress swiftly rejected last year.
The effort to curb Medicare spending by $36 billion by 2011 and by $105 billion a decade from now is a sharp turnabout for the administration. Last year, Bush said the health-insurance program that covers 41 million elderly and disabled people should be spared any cuts.
About $20 billion of the $36 billion would come from reducing automatic payment increases to hospitals and other institutional providers, such as ambulance services and skilled-nursing facilities, while the rest would be spread among other forms of care.
"The president's priority is to protect HMO and drug-company profits while shifting costs to beneficiaries and providers," Reid said Saturday. "Cutting funding for hospitals and other providers won't solve the health care crisis."
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