The White House Office of Management and Budget is usually tight-lipped with details about forthcoming money matters—except when it elects not to be.
In a New York Times op-ed piece Sunday, OMB Director Jack Lew dropped a couple of tidbits from the Obama administration’s fiscal 2012 budget request due out next week.
As the White House had already revealed, it wants to cut the Community Service Block Grant program in half, but Lew attached a number–$350 million—to the amount of that proposed reduction. Cuts to the Community Development Block Grant program are also in the cards, he said, and the administration will recommend carving $125 million out of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative.
It’s presumably all part of a strategy to show that the White House is willing to gore some favored Democratic oxen on the road to fiscal responsibility. House Republicans are expected to reveal their own plan for making more than $32 billion in fiscal 2011 program cuts later this week.
