What do we know about the course of education grants in the outyears?
The administration’s FY 2006 budget contains tables that show total outlays by budget function and subfunction through FY 20102/, and OMB has supplied us with line item budgets for mandatory programs for those outyears. Using these numbers, it’s possible to estimate the course of FY 2006-2010 spending for all discretionary programs, including grant programs. The resulting discretionary grant figures are estimates, based on OMB’s projections of the underlying budget subfunctions. If the budget subfunction goes up or down in those outyears, the assumption is that every program within it goes up or down by the same relative amount. Thus, the estimates are accurate only to the extent that the discretionary grants comprise a large chunk of the subfunction vs. a small chunk. This forces us to concentrate on D.Ed. discretionary grants for elementary, secondary, and vocational education (budget subfunction 501), which together comprise over 95 percent of total discretionary spending (i.e., gov
