Bush sends Congress $3.1 trillion budget
Biggest proposed increases are in defense spending, homeland security
WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush introduced a $3.1 trillion budget on Monday that supports sizable increases in military spending to fight the war on terrorism and protects his signature tax cuts.
The spending proposal, which shows the government spending $3 trillion in a 12-month period for the first time in history, squeezes most of government outside of national security, and also seeks $196 billion in savings over the next five years in the government's giant health care programs -- Medicare for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.
Even with those savings, Bush projects that the deficits, which had been declining, will soar to near-record levels, hitting $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009. The all-time high deficit in dollar terms was $413 billion in 2004.
Democrats attacked Bush's final spending plan as a continuation of this administration's failed policies which wiped out a projected 10-year surplus of $5.6 trillion and replaced it with a record buildup in debt. See who would be this year's winners and losers »
"Today's budget bears all the hallmarks of the Bush legacy -- it leads to more deficits, more debt, more tax cuts, more cutbacks in critical services," said House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-South Carolina.
For his last budget, Bush, as a moneysaving measure, stopped the practice of providing 3,000 paper copies of the budget to members of Congress and the media, instead posting the entire document online. Democrats joked that Bush cut back on the printed copies because he ran out of red ink.
Fiscal 2009 budget
"The president proposes more of the same failed policies he has embraced throughout his time in office -- more deficit-financed war spending, more deficit-financed tax cuts tilted to benefit the wealthiest and more borrowing from foreign nations like China and Japan," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.
Bush defended his record, saying it supported a strong defense and, if his policies are followed, will produce a balanced budget by 2012, three years after he leaves office.
Budget highlights
DEFICITS: The plan will claim deficits in the $400 billion range for this year and next
DEFENSE: The Pentagon would get a $35 billion increase to $515 billion for core programs, about 7 percent, with war costs additional
MEDICARE AND MEDICAID: The programs will see almost $200 billion in cuts over the next five years, about three times the savings proposed last year but rejected by Congress
HEALTH: Health and Human Services Department funding would be cut by $2 billion, amounting to a 3 percent reduction
HOMELAND SECURITY: Overall, the budget for homeland security programs will increase by almost 11 percent
"Two key principles guided the development of my budget -- keeping America safe and ensuring our continued prosperity," Bush said in his budget message to Congress. "As commander in chief, my highest priority is the security of the American people."
Bush's final full budget is for the 2009 fiscal year, which begins on October 1. It proposes spending $3.1 trillion, up 6 percent from projected spending of $2.9 trillion in the current budget year.
Part of the deficit increase this year and next reflects the cost of a $145 billion stimulus package of tax refunds for individuals and tax cuts for business investment that Bush is urging Congress to pass quickly to try to combat a threatened recession.
Bush projects that the deficit will decline rapidly starting in 2010 and will achieve a $48 billion balance in 2012.
But Democrats said that forecast was based on flawed math that only included $70 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2009 and no money after that and also failed to include any provisions after this year for keeping the alternative minimum tax, originally aimed at the wealthy, from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that fixing the AMT in 2012 would cost $118 billion, more than double the surplus Bush is projecting for that year.
Even some Republicans faulted Bush's budget sleight of hand.
"They've obviously played an inordinate number of games to try to make it look better," Sen. Judd Gregg, the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said in an interview with The Associated Press.
"Let's face it. This budget is done with the understanding that nobody's going to be taking a long, hard look at it," said Gregg, R-New Hampshire.
Bush's spending blueprint sets the stage for what will probably be epic battles in the president's last year in office, as both parties seek to gain advantages with voters heading into the November elections.
The 6 percent overall increase in spending for 2009 reflects a continued surge in spending on the government's huge benefit programs for the elderly -- Social Security and Medicare, even with the projected five-year savings of $196 billion over five years. Those savings are achieved by freezing payments to hospitals and other health care providers. A much-smaller effort by Bush in this area last year went nowhere in Congress.
While Bush projects that total security funding in the areas of the budget controlled by annual appropriations will go up by 8.2 percent, he projects only a 0.3 percent increase in discretionary spending for the rest of government.
To achieve such a small boost, Bush would hold hundreds of programs well beyond what is needed to keep up with inflation. He also seeks to eliminate or sharply slash 151 programs he considers unnecessary.
Bush targeted many of the same programs last year but Congress rejected the effort. E-mail to a friend
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press.
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