I'd like a street on 1 2 3 for $2,900,000,000 please.

[rs]

Its an AP wire story, this particular source was from

http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070206/BUSINESS/702060368/-1/NEWS01

Bush 2008 budget needs economic luck
President assumes exit from Iraq in campaign year
By TOM RAUM, Associated Press
Posted Tuesday, February 6, 2007

President Bush holds up a copy of the fiscal 2008 budget he submitted to Congress. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called the budget, "a deception to hide a massive increase in debt." AP/CHARLES DHARAPAK

WASHINGTON -- One major unmentioned entry in President Bush's new budget is luck.

Luck that the economy keeps growing, that corporate profits remain robust, that inflation stays tame and that foreigners keep lending the U.S. money. Otherwise, the numbers don't add up.

Bush's spending outline also assumes an exit strategy from Iraq that even the president's supporters see as wishful thinking -- a sharp drop in war spending in time for the 2008 presidential election. It's a peace dividend without peace.

Not surprisingly, Democrats were quick to criticize.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cited a "deception to hide a massive increase in debt." Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said, "The president's eyes are shut tight to this country's fiscal reality."

House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., doubted Republicans -- let alone any Democrats -- could embrace the president's $2.9 trillion budget for the accounting year that begins next Oct. 1.

Like Bush, newly empowered Democrats are also talking about increased defense and homeland security spending and a balanced budget in five years. And, while Bush's budget calls for making expiring tax cuts permanent, Democrats have a wish list of increased domestic spending. Both make balancing the budget even harder.

Thus, Democrats who now control both chambers of Congress need the same run of good economic news that Bush does to make their numbers work.

A business slowdown or recession, an increase in inflation and interest rates, or a reversal in the willingness of foreign investors to keep buying U.S. Treasury bonds could put the skids on what has been a strong economy.

Meanwhile, spiraling payouts in guaranteed federal benefits for Social Security and Medicare as baby boomers retire "is going to be the single largest economic problem that we face," said Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody's Economy.com."Deficits look OK today," Zandi said. "But what happens at a time when the economy isn't operating at full tilt?"

When Bush took office in 2001, the national debt was about $5.6 trillion. Now it stands at about $8.6 trillion.

Democrats won control of Congress last November, largely by riding a wave of public discontent over Bush's handling of Iraq.

"We heard loud and clear from Congress" that it wanted "more transparency" in defense spending, White House Budget Director Rob Portman said Monday.

That's why, Portman said, the Pentagon included details for the upcoming budget year on how much the war would cost -- an estimated $141.7 billion for fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the cost of repairing and replacing equipment lost in combat.

In the past, such war costs were not included in the president's annual budget. Instead, emergency "supplemental" spending bills were submitted.

In the new budget, with a bookkeeping wave of the hand, the war-cost entry drops to $50 billion for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, 2008 -- just a little more than a month before Election Day -- and drops to zero for subsequent years.

Portman told reporters the $50 billion, followed by zeros for the next three years, was just an "allowance" or a "placeholder" because of the difficulty of estimating longer-term war costs.

But the entries complicate efforts to chart a trajectory toward Bush's 2012 balanced-budget goal.

"I don't think you get 'transparency points' for acknowledging what is pretty much crystal clear to 300 million Americans, which is that the war is going to have costs this coming year at the same time you're calling for a surge in troops," said Gene Sperling, a former top economic adviser in the Clinton administration.

The amount spent on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and other anti-terror activities already tops $500 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. In another year it will rival the inflation-adjusted $660 billion spent on the Vietnam War.

BUDGET HIGHLIGHTS

• President Bush said $245 billion is needed for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the next year and a half, bringing total Pentagon funding for the wars to $662 billion. But his budget assumes, at least on paper, that no additional war funding will be needed after 2009.

• Bush proposed modest cuts to the rapidly growing Medicare and Medicaid health care programs, but failed to address chronic shortfalls in future years that would force painful sacrifices on beneficiaries. Instead, Medicare providers such as hospitals, nursing homes and home care providers would face payment cuts, while higher-income beneficiaries would pay greater premiums. The cuts to Medicaid would come in part from curbing payments to states for administrative costs, which advocates for the poor say would force states to pass those cuts on to the poor.

• Democrats said that Bush would meet his five-year balanced-budget goal by forecasting far higher tax revenues than nonpartisan congressional estimators expect. His budget predicts a $61 billion surplus in 2012, but the plan would generate almost $100 billion in red ink that year instead under more cautious Congressional Budget Office revenue estimates.

• Bush proposes to eliminate or sharply reduce 141 federal programs totaling $12 billion. But Congress has ignored these same recommended cuts in the past, including an attempt last year to kill the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, which provides nutritionally balanced boxes of food to about a half-million poor people per month. Democrats also promised to restore cuts from low-income heating subsidies, Head Start for preschool children, rural health programs and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by shifting some portion of Bush's big defense hike to domestic programs.

• Bush is proposing a few high-profile spending boosts, such as an increase in the maximum Pell grant for low-income students, from the current $4,050 to $4,600. The $15 billion cost over five years would largely be borne by cutting subsidies to lenders issuing student loans.

• The president's budget also includes an initiative -- billed as "dead on arrival" by Democrats -- to expand health care coverage to the uninsured. The complex proposal would give every family a $15,000 tax deduction for purchasing health coverage but would make current employee-supplied health coverage taxable for certain taxpayers. Bush's plan would save most taxpayers money, but Democrats say it would lead many employers to stop providing health insurance.

"millions for defense but not one penny for poor people".