NASA Glenn wins in plan; other programs lose

BYLINE: Stephen Koff, Sabrina Eaton & John Mangels, Plain Dealer Reporters

THE 2008 FEDERAL BUDGET

Washington - President Bush on Monday presented a 2008 spending plan that could limit the money flowing to Northeast Ohio for medical research and community improvement projects.

But Bush's new budget could at least keep employment steady at NASA Glenn Research Center in Brook Park, and help clean toxic sediment from Lake Erie and its tributaries - though without as much money as promised earlier in his administration.

"The pain is over," Glenn deputy director Rich Christiansen said. "We're over this talk about 'We're going down, we're going down.' "

In the president's proposed 2008 budget, Glenn is allotted $556.1 million. That's about $20 million less than the center expects to get this year, but both numbers may change as Congress tinkers with the allocations and as NASA assigns additional work on Project Constellation, the vast effort to send astronauts to the moon and Mars.

Glenn director Woodrow Whitlow said he expects no layoffs among the center's 1,667 civil service employees. None of those workers is "uncovered," meaning all are assigned to projects that NASA has included in its budget.

Last year, 270 Glenn scientists and engineers were "uncovered" and at risk of layoffs.

The rest of Bush's budget is a mix of good and bad for the region, but tempered with a certainty: The Democratic Congress will not accept the Republican president's budget as is.

From Bush's sweeping proposals to change how the nation pays for health care, to his desire to cut the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, to the thousands of small-type numbers throughout the 1,237-page budget appendix, the president faces immediate obstacles.

"While there are a few positive steps, such as an increase in funding for Pell grants to help lower-income students go to college, overall this budget sends the wrong message to America's middle class," freshman Sen. Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, said in a statement.

The Northeast-Midwest Institute, a nonpartisan organization that follows issues in Congress, noted that Bush would cut the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which helps poor people pay for their heating bills, by 17 percent compared with 2006, the last year for which both houses of Congress passed spending bills. The House only last week passed a spending bill for the rest of fiscal 2007, and while the Senate will follow soon, budget watchers on Monday could only make projections on how Bush's 2008 budget, if passed, would differ from spending in 2007.

Compared with 2006, though, he would slice money for the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program, which is designed to improve the competitiveness of small manufacturers, by more than 50 percent. And in a proposed cut whose announcement coincides with a deep freeze across the Midwest, Bush would strip by 40 percent federal help for people who want to weatherize their homes.

Some proposed cuts - such as a big reduction to the Community Development Block Grant program, which has helped improve Cleveland streetscapes - are consistent with reductions Bush failed to win before, in the name of streamlining programs.

Others are consistent with Bush's new message of keeping "non-security" discretionary spending below inflation in a five-year plan to end the deficit.

"America's fiscal situation is dire," said Sen. George Voinovich, an Ohio Republican. "Nothing can be off the table if we want to ensure our long-term prosperity and increase our competitiveness in the global marketplace."

That could affect Cleveland's medical community. A number of federal grant-making research institutes would get hikes so low they would not keep pace with inflation. They include the National Cancer Institute, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:

skoff@plaind.com, 216-999-4212

seaton@plaind.com, 216-999-4212

jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842

Stephen Koff, Sabrina Eaton and John Mangels, Plain Dealer Reporters