The President issued his FY 2004 budget proposal February 3, which was received with accolades by some and with great criticism by others worried that several key education, housing and environmental programs would suffer under his proposed funding levels. Included in this article are links to OMB Watch analyses, as well as the responses of other organizations and Members of Congress.

On February 3, Virginia’s House of Delegates voted 69-29 to repeal its state estate tax, bucking a trend among state legislatures to work to preserve the tax’s revenue in a time of record setting state deficits. Governor Mark Warner (D) had petitioned hard to preserve this piece of revenue for Virginia, which is facing an estimated 1.1 billion budget gap for FY 2004, but the vote is being touted by the Republican-controlled legislative body as a “veto-proof” majority. Though repeal advocates in Virginia argued that repeal would protect the state’s small farms and family businesses, data from the USDA and the Federal Reserve show that both the average large farm and family business in Virginia already fall well below the current $1 million exemption under federal law.

The President (faced with a 6 percent unemployment rate, increased homeland security needs and costs, and a projected $300 billion deficit for the coming year) has decided that repeal of the estate tax must be made permanent – at all costs. And the costs are great: nearly $56 billion in the first full year of repeal. But you wouldn’t know it from the President’s budget charts.

On January 23, on a vote of 69-29, the Senate passed H.J. Res. 2, a $390 billion omnibus appropriations bill in an effort to begin bringing the FY 2003 appropriations season to a close. Since Congress was unable to resolve its budgeting differences last fall during its election fervor, this bill combines into one large bill the 11 appropriations bills that were not completed before Congress adjourned in December. (The timeline for this appropriations bill was so rushed, in fact, that Senate and House Republicans agreed to completely bypass the House, which has the authority to originate all spending bills, and allow the Senate to begin action on the omnibus spending bill.)

There has been little public or media attention to the “Program Assessment Performance Tool” (PART) developed by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), even though its explicit and primary purpose is to evaluate and tie program “performance” to budget appropriations. OMB Is also taking this effort very seriously. Why this sudden renewed attention to “government performance?”