I certainly hope the reports of an “austere budget” are accurate:

The president, who campaigned for re-election on a pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009, is targeting 150 government programs for either outright elimination or sharp cutbacks.

Bush will propose spending $2.5 trillion in the budget year that begins Oct. 1. For the current year, he is estimating the budget deficit will reach a record $427 billion. That compares with last year’s $412 billion deficit and is the third straight year the Bush administration will have set, in dollar terms, a deficit high….

One of the biggest battles is certain to occur in the area of payments and other assistance to farmers, which the administration wants to trim by $587 million in 2006 and by $5.7 billion over the next decade.

Those payments go to farmers growing a wide range of crops from cotton, rice and corn to soybeans and wheat.

The United States and other rich countries have come under criticism for these agriculture subsidies from poor countries. In the current round of global trade talks, these nations are pressing for the subsidies’ elimination.

Other programs set for cuts, the AP has learned, include the Army Corps of Engineers, whose dam and other waterway projects are extremely popular in Congress; the Energy Department; and a number of health programs under the Health and Human Services Department.

About one-third of the programs being targeted for elimination are in the Education Department, including federal grant programs for local schools in such areas as vocational education, supporting drug-free schools and Even Start, a $225 million literacy program.

The administration also will seek to restrain growth in mandatory spending, primarily by trimming costs in Medicaid, the joint program with states that pays the cost of poor people’s health care.

Let the battle begin!