For example, the White House proposed to cut Homeland Security program funds by $465 million in national grants to states to improve their security readiness. This would hamper the funding to increase port security and other forms of transportation-related programs, as well as state surveillance functions. Then, eight other agencies, such as education and environment are proposed to receive fewer funds than the current year.  And in a slight-of-hand way, Bush increases the Pell grant and funds for elementary and secondary education, while cutting funding for banks to provide student loans, eliminating student loans altogether at vocational and technical schools. 
  
The proposed cuts above provide some evidence that this administration is not focused on preparing students in this country to compete effectively with immigrants, who receive visas, come into the country and obtain technical jobs, because community colleges do not receive the financial resources to train our young people.
  
Most importantly, the Bush budget funds the war in Iraq by proposing cuts to the Medicare and Medicaid programs, the largest and most important health programs in the country. Where are the priorities of a president who is willing to sacrifice the health of millions of citizens – eliminating the elderly health program altogether  - to pursue a war that ensures that thousands (35,000 at this point) of people injured by it will not have the medical assistance they need in the long run?
  
On the other hand, Boeing aircraft officials, for instance, are delighted with the budget proposals, saying that they are coming in somewhat higher than they thought, because as a defense industry they would benefit from the increased spending in that area. Defense spending would go from $600 billion to $623 billion next year under this budget, with $50 billion being used to expand the military by 92,000 over the next five years. 
  
Bush puts the cost of the war in Iraq on budget for the first time and asks for an additional $70 billion to pour into the bottomless pit.
  
State officials are upset about these proposed cuts, not only because they would receive less from the federal government to fund Medicare and Medicaid, but also because urban programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program would also be cut.  This cut is a cold-blooded swipe at the less fortunate, many of whom, because their own country does not provide enough heating assistance funds to keep them warm, rely on fuel provided by the government of Venezuela, through its ownership of Citgo filling stations across the nation. We should be ashamed of any president who exhibits a low level of care and concern for the less fortunate.
  
To cap it off, Bush proposes to reauthorize the child health program SCHIP, but does so at $35 billion less than the program needs to meet current levels of funding in the first year. Where are the savings going? You guessed it.
  
Fortunately, this budget has been criticized by the Democratic budget Chairman Senator Kent Conrad, of North Dakota, who calls it, “a combination of deception and debt… disconnected from reality.” Moreover, Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) has regretted the lack of genuine response from the president to a bi-partisan budget framework and suggests that many of the proposed cuts will not survive the budget process in the House of Representatives.
  
Nevertheless, while we know that these proposals will be substantially changed in the coming days, we have a good look at the budget priorities of the person who is running the country and the inverted set of values that the budget represents. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. saw that the havoc the Vietnam war spending wreaked on the newly created programs of the Great Society, sacrificing them to an open-ended war effort. That mirrors the situation faced by the nation – and by the Black community - at this moment in history. To correct this, as Dr. King also observed, we need a “revolution of values” - not just a new budget.

Dr. Ron Walters is the Distinguished Leadership Scholar, Director of the African American Leadership Program and Professor of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park.  His latest books are: White Nationalism, Black Interests (Wayne State University Press); and Freedom Is Not Enough (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers).