President Bush submitted his $3.1 trillion fiscal 2009 budget request to Congress today. It included $987.6 billion in discretionary spending, which is a $46.2 billion increase over the 2008 enacted budget. Bush directed most of the additional discretionary spending--$44.9 billion--for security programs, which left non-security discretionary spending up by just $1.3 billion or less than half a percent.

The federal information technology budget request for fiscal 2009 will rise by more than $4 billion. However, in actual appropriation terms, the IT budget will increase by only about $2 billion.

In the White House’s request, agency IT spending would be $70.9 billion, up from a 2008 request of $66.4 billion — a 6.3 percent increase. Congress appropriated $68 billion for 2008, which makes for a 3.8 percent change when comparing actual to requested dollars.

The Office of Management and Budget also for the first time is providing Congress with cost savings of more than $508 million from the 25 e-government and nine Lines of Business initiatives for 2007.

OMB asked agencies to report savings from the e-government and LOB projects in a 2006 memo, and starting in early 2007, agencies estimated costs for their current services impacted by these 34 initiatives.

A government official said agencies submitted actual costs at the end of 2007 and from that information OMB could calculate savings.

“We are leveraging costing principles of A-76 that everyone seems to understand,” the official said.