When the Obama administration was handing out huge increases to federal agencies in last year’s skyrocketing budget, the Department of Energy suffered a 0.4 percent cutback.
But don’t shed a tear for them: Despite the freeze President Obama announced last night, the folks at Energy will have $65 billion to spend — compared with a mere $26.6 billion when President Bush left office.
The Energy Department is one of the big winners in the Obama spending splurge, thanks to a one-two punch of last year’s lavish budget handouts plus the huge federal stimulus package.
Another winner is the Environmental Protection Agency. From a $7.8 billion budget under Bush, its coffers grew by a whopping 35 percent in Obama’s first budget, unveiled last February.
Add in the $7.2 billion from the stimulus, and the pollution-fighting agency’s available funds will grow to $17.7 billion — more than twice that under Bush.
The Department of Education, similarly, nearly tripled spending, from $46.2 billion under Bush to $127.8 billion.
Ron Nabors, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the spending cap Obama announced in his State of the Union Address a “hard freeze.” But nearly every department is spending more since Obama’s election.