Where does it hurt?

“By Philip Rucker, Monday, April 11, 9:37 PM

More than half of the $38 billion in spending cuts that lawmakers agreed to last week in the 2011 budget compromise that averted a government shutdown would hit education, labor and health programs.

Funding for federal Pell grants, job training and a children’s health-care initiative would face cuts, senior congressional aides said. A multitude of other programs — from highway and high-speed rail projects to rural development initiatives — also would experience significant reductions.

But some of the worst-sounding trims are not quite what they seem, and officials said they would not necessarily result in lost jobs or service cutbacks. In several cases, what look like large reductions are actually accounting gimmicks.

The legislation includes $4.9 billion from the Justice Department’s Crime Victims Fund, for instance, but that money is in a reserve fund that wasn’t going to be spent this year. Crime victims would receive no less money than they did before the deal.

The Washington region would be spared from potentially painful cuts to the Metro system, as the budget measure would fully fund the federal government’s $150 million share of the agency’s budget, congressional sources said.

But District officials are livid about some policy provisions attached to the bill, particularly one that would ban federal and local funding for abortion. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and several members of the D.C. Council led a protest rally Monday on Capitol Hill and were arrested.

The full extent of the cuts wasn’t slated to be released until late Monday night, after congressional aides worked all weekend and all day Monday to shape a detailed spending plan based on the framework that President Obama and congressional leaders agreed to on Friday. Budget aides were tallying cuts line by line late into the evening, racing to prepare a bill to be introduced in the House as soon as Monday night, and aides cautioned that the precise numbers would remain fluid until then.

Of the $38 billion in overall reductions in the budget that funds the government for the rest of the fiscal year, about $20 billion would come from domestic discretionary programs, while $17.8 billion would be cut from mandatory programs. The latter cuts, known as “ChIMPS,” affect permanent programs protected by law. The money they lose this year could be put back in their budgets next year.

Although the pain would be felt across virtually the entire government — the deal includes a $1 billion across-the-board cut shared among all non-defense agencies — Republicans were able to focus the sharpest cuts on areas they have long targeted. The Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments, which represent about 28 percent of non-defense discretionary spending, face as much as a combined $19.8 billion, or 52 percent, of the total reductions in the plan.

And although Democrats protected funding for some cherished programs, such as Head Start and the implementation of Obama’s health-care law, they were not able to reduce military spending.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the deal demonstrates “a commitment to making tough choices that are not the kinds of choices in an ideal world the president would want to make or that Democrats would want to make.”

Less-painful cuts

Some of the cuts may have only a limited effect on people’s daily lives. The Crime Victims Fund provides money — for counseling and other services — that comes from fees levied on criminals, according to U.S. officials and victims’ advocates. By law, all the money collected must be spent on victims. But Congress has limited the amount that can be spent each year, allowing excess money to grow in a reserve account. Those savings constitute the $4.9 billion listed as a cut, advocates and officials said.

“It would be a disaster for crime victims if this were really a cut,” said Susan Howley, director for public policy at the National Center for Victims of Crime.

The bill includes savings of nearly $500 million on the federal Pell grant program, which aids low-income college students. But those savings are reflected in an administration plan already underway to limit grants to the academic year to preserve the maximum grant amount of $5,550.

The year-round component “was costing more money than was originally anticipated and was not having a noticeable effect” on completion rates, Education Department spokesman Justin Hamilton said.

Another cut, $3.5 billion for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, would affect only rewards for states that make an extra effort to enroll children. But officials with knowledge of the budget deal said that most states were unlikely to qualify for the bonuses and that sufficient money would be available for those that did.

And about $2.2 billion would be cut from the COOPS program, a provision of the new health-care law that subsidizes loans to civic and community groups that come together to create health insurance cooperatives. This represents more than one-third of the program’s $6 billion budget.

‘We’re on a battleship’

Most lawmakers will not discuss the specifics of the spending cuts until a final analysis is revealed. But Rep. George Miller (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Education and the Workforce Committee, issued a statement after the deal was announced Friday saying that he “had concerns.”

“Poor and middle-class families have already received more than their fair share of pain in this economy while the wealthy and special interests have paid no price,” he said.

The House and the Senate plan to vote on the budget bill this week. Some conservative lawmakers have said they will not support it. Many freshmen House Republicans — who had resisted backing down from the GOP proposal of $61 billion in cuts — said they will remain undecided until they have a chance to read the measure.”