OUR REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT:

Even the president's popular TIGER transportation grants are reduced to $500 million, $100 million below 2014 and less than half of what Obama wanted in 2015. The National Institutes of Health will benefit from new Ebola funds for clinical trials, but its core $29.8 billion budget is expected to grow by just $150 million -- not enough to keep pace with inflation.

Indeed, from Amtrak to Head Start and low-income fuel assistance, much of the domestic budget is flat.

Modest increases are allowed to hire more immigration judges and make good on promises to beef up child care grants. Funding for Pell Grants is preserved and new steps begun to address the problem of college affordability. But Republicans resisted repeated efforts by retiring Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) to allow some cap adjustment for NIH. And despite support from Obama and Western Republicans, it remained a hard sell to allow emergency, off-budget spending for catastrophic wildfires. [...]

[A]t this stage in Obama's presidency, the emphasis on security-related programs over investments at home is still striking. And all signs indicate the pattern will repeat itself in 2016.

Friday's strong jobs report testified to how far the nation has come since the Great Recession, which greeted Obama when he first moved into the White House in 2009. But despite the improved economy, Obama will leave office with fewer real dollars for domestic appropriations than President George W. Bush had before him.

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