WASHINGTON -- President Bush's proposed budget for the U.S. Transportation Department is coming under heavy criticism from a variety of sources.

Although spending at the USDOT would increase slightly, highway spending is cut by more than $2 billion from the current year.

And it proposes to borrow money from mass transit to cover a shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund.

Predictably, the proposal brought criticism from Democrats in Congress, as well as from representatives of highway users and trucking.

The administration proposed an overall USDOT budget of $68.2 billion for fiscal '09, up from the $67 billion it proposed for this year, but it would give the Federal Highway Administration $40.1 billion, a cut of $2.04 billion from 2008 and $1 billion less than Congress authorized in the 2005 transportation law.

Most of the funding cut is in money dedicated to federal-aid highways - reduced by $1.8 billion to $39.4 billion from $41.2 billion last year.

"This budget helps move us forward on a new course that delivers high levels of safety, takes advantage of modern technology and financing mechanisms and eases congestion with efficient and reliable transportation systems," DOT Secretary Mary Peters said.

Rep. James Oberstar, D-Minn., chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said Bush "stayed well inside his ideological comfort zone (with his budget). We got the same old stale proposals, the same neglect of our nation's infrastructure needs."

John Horsley, executive director of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, said, "This proposal clearly leaves highway funding short of the FY 2009 level states had been promised."

"There's a $1.8 billion hole the administration has created in their budget, and we would hope that when Congress acts, they will find a way to fill it," said Darrin Roth, director of highway operations for the American Trucking Associations. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to cut something that creates jobs and puts money into the economy. That would be counterproductive."

"The administration is going exactly the wrong way by cutting critical highway funding that keeps people and our economy moving," said Greg Cohen, president of the American Highway Users Alliance.

Despite the highway-spending cuts, Peters told reporters "the president's budget honors the commitments" of the 2005 transportation reauthorization act, which called for a total of $286.4 billion to be spent over six years, up to September 2009.

Phyllis Scheinberg, the department's chief financial officer, said the 2009 budget "brings the total [investment] up to" $286.4 billion in spending on highways, transit and safety programs.

The 2008 budget Congress passed last year for the DOT spent more than the 2005 bill had called for, in part because of a mechanism that allows the program to grow if trust-fund revenues rise in subsequent years, which has happened.

The budget, Peters said, "reflects a $3.2 billion shortfall in the highway account" of the trust fund, but a $4.4 billion positive balance in the mass-transit account.

Because of the highway shortfall, "the president is requesting temporary authority to allow 'repayable advances' between the two accounts," she said.

The differences in the projections, Peters said, are "the basis for the advances," with the hopes the loans would "keep [the highway] fund solvent."

However, Peters cited the fund's problems to once again push for changes in the federal transportation program.

"We're going to limp over the finish line," she said, adding that she believed there needs to be "substantively different ways to fund transportation in America."

As part of that approach, the budget requests a transfer of $175 million in unspent highway earmarks for DOTs congestion initiative, even though a similar request was denied last year.

The budget calls for $100 million of that request to be directed to projects "that would implement congestion pricing," as well as other congestion relief mechanisms, and $75 million to "support projects negotiated" as part of DOT's Corridors to the Future program.

Last year, DOT selected six interstate highways - Interstates 5, 10, 15, 69, 70 and 95 - for the program, singling them out for special assistance in reducing congestion.

In addition to funding the nations highway program, the DOT budget also requests $541 million for the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration - an $11 million boost from last year. The budget proposes dividing the funds into two categories - $230 million for federal motor carrier safety programs and $300 million for grants to states.

The budget also provides $851 million for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

To view highlights of the proposed USDOT budget, go to www.dot.gov/bib2009.