The increase will allow NIH to support 34,000 research grants, including more than 9,000 new and competing grants. The administration requested the full authorized funding for highways and aviation. Clearest winners are military personnel, beneficiaries of Bush's promise to improve their pay and quality of life. The budget proposed more than doubling aid to Colombia's Andean neighbors to prevent that country's drug war from spilling over their borders. For Mars missions, the budget also assumes an increase in future years, estimated to be on the order of a few hundred million dollars.
Exact amounts are unclear.
Housing advocates note that 79,000 new vouchers were funded this year. The budget would eliminate the Community Access Program, created under President Clinton to coordinate care among public hospitals, clinics and other providers of care for people without health insurance. Administration officials consider the program a relic of a time four decades ago when doctors were in short supply. A Clinton initiative to fund the hiring of new local police officers would be phased out, although Bush officials say there's already money in the pipeline to achieve the goal of 100,000 new officers. Just under 1 million acres have been protected by the 11-year program.