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Perhaps it was just your writeup but you didnt convince me that there wasnt a cut in spending. Your head line talks about was there a cut in spending and then you say no but I didnt find your proof in the article. Rather you seemed to switch topic from spending to results. Fair enough, results are more important. But thats not what your headline said, nor what the Democrat argument was. Seems you were spinning.

How about clarifying this for me. What was total education department spending last year and what is proposed in the budget for this year? Is that an increase or decrease?

They increased spending. Senator Kennedy stated in LATIMES.com among other things the exact opposite, a blatant lie. I put a quote up from CNN.com that even states the spending was increased, surprisngly something positive from CNN. Kennedy is upset because although there is more money available, the schools have to earn it. Therefore he states there's a cut since no school will really earn it. It's like the altering voting rights for criminals always catches slack for affecting the blacks, implying it's racist. Democrats like this apply no repsonsibility to the subject at hand. Instead, they take the results and spin them to say what they want. Inevitably, in the end, schools may not get as much as last year because they don't meet the standards, not because the money isn't available.

Bush's budget proposed to increase total education spending by 2.8%, or $1.4 billion in fiscal year 2003. That includes both student aid and elementary and secondary spending. That will bring total Dept of Ed spending to a whopping $50 billion! Last year it was just over $48 billion.

The "cuts" Kennedy is talking about exist only in liberal-land and he is exploiting most people's lack of knowledge about how programs are actually funded in Washington. The difference is between what a program is "authorized" to spend (the maximum possible in any given year) and what is actually "appropriated" (or in this case, proposed to be appropriated by Bush)-- that is what is actually spent in a given year.

H.R. 1, the No Child Left Behind Act that Bush pushed through last year authorized spending at about $29 billion for programs within it. Bush's budget proposed spending $22 billion for those programs this year. By way of comparison Congress funded those programs at about $21 billion last year (HR 1 programs are almost half of the total Dept of Ed budget). Big surprise, programs are ALMOST NEVER funded at their fully authorized levels, especially in the first year of their existence. So what Kennedy is saying is that since Bush didnt ask Congress to spend the MAXIMUM possible in the first year of the program's existence, that to him is a cut. Go figure.