Senator favors President’s budget plan

President Bush’s proposal for a two-point-one trillion-dollar-budget goes before Congress today, and Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley, a republican, says he has few complaints about what he’s seen so far. Grassley knows the President is asking for a 14-percent increase in defense spending. Grassley says it’s important because we’re at war.Grassley says President Reagan tried to boost the defense budget by similar levels in the early 1980s, but there wasn’t a follow-through to ensure the money was being spent properly.Iowa Senator Tom Harkin, a democrat, says the Administration’s budget contains “needed investments” in national security and homeland defense, but falls “far short” on economic security. Harkin says it’s wrong to “sacrifice job creation and health care security in order to extend huge tax breaks for millionaires.” Bush’s fiscal 2003 budget calls for the biggest military build-up since the Cold War. To shift funding to defense and homeland security, the budget proposes cuts elsewhere, including to the Labor Department, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency.