Bush is planning this approach amid record federal deficits, which hit $413 billion last year, that hinder his ability to pay for overhauling Social Security and extending his tax cuts. He also has tied the budget shortfalls to the weakening dollar and pledged to reduce red ink to help prop up the currency.
At his White House economic conference yesterday, Bush said he made ''good progress" in holding the growth of programs not related to defense or homeland security this year to about 1 percent.
''What I'm saying is we're going to submit a tough budget," he said. ''And I look forward to working with Congress on the tough budget."
The president is still making decisions about the $2.5 trillion budget for 2006 he will propose in February. But House and Senate aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said cuts seem destined for such programs as housing, grants for community development, equipment purchases for the Federal Aviation Administration, and Army Corps of Engineers water projects.
Even the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, an administration favorite, was facing an increase of only 1 percent, pending appeals to the White House by outgoing NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, a lobbyist said.
The zero-sum game that is federal budgeting means that if spending for next year is held flat, for every dollar increase that administration favorites like education or veterans receive, another dollar must be cut elsewhere. Even a program receiving the same as this year would lose purchasing power because of inflation, running about 3 percent annually.
Bush's spending blueprint would be among the toughest for domestic programs since President Reagan's budgets of the 1980s. Overall domestic spending has grown every year but three since 1987 -- in 1995 and 1996, when Republicans first recaptured Congress, and in 2000, immediately after a onetime influx of US aid to help poor and debtor countries.
Even as domestic spending growth has slowed, overall expenditures including defense and domestic security continue to climb, largely because of the costs of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Congress approved $87.5 billion for the wars in fall 2003 and $25 billion more last spring, and Bush is expected to request $75 billion to $100 billion more early in 2005.
As word of Bush's evolving plans for domestic spending has seeped out, it has cheered conservative Republicans. They spent much of Bush's first term criticizing him for letting spending grow too rapidly and pressuring congressional leaders to clamp down.
