The Education Budget proposal can be found here. The rationale for the budget decisions can also be found here.

Basically, the Bush administration, throughout its budget, has attempted to introduce the concept of funding things that work, and not increasing funding for things that do not appear to work. This is opposed to the standard operating procedure of continuing to constantly increase funding for things politicians wish would work, whether they do or not. This concept of actual utility is as radical in Washington as the Copernican Theory once was in the Vatican. Whether Bush can make this concept work, or even stick, remains to be seen.

What is happening is that Bush is increasing education funding in areas he thinks are workable, and decreasing funding in areas he thinks aren't working. This seems perfectly reasonable. Obviously, the Democrats have different ideas of which programs deserve the funding and which don't, which is probably Kennedy's problem.

Kennedy's attempt here to make it look like Bush is cutting all education funding is, of course, just the standard political lie.

The overall budget outlay for education is increased, if not by very much, from 2002 to 2003.