President Bush holds up
a laptop computer containing the 2009 budget during a meeting with
his cabinet at the White House in Washington February 4, 2008.
(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
US President George W. Bush sent Congress a 3.1 trillion budget
on Monday for the 2009 fiscal year that approached a landmark in
military spending and would widen the government's deficit.
"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."
Under the budget for the fiscal year starting October 1, 2008,
military spending is expected to increase by 7.5 percent to 515
billion dollars. Bush also sought 70 billion dollars more for the
"global war on terror."
If it is approved full, annual military spending, when adjusted
for inflation, will have reached its highest level since World War
II.
The 3.1 trillion-dollar budget is 6 percent higher than the
projected 2.9 trillion dollar spending in the current fiscal year,
which ends on September 30, 2008.
Copies of President
Bush's FY 2009 Budget are seen inside the Senate Budget Committee
hearing room on Capitol Hill in Washington February 4, 2008.
(Xinhua/Reuters Photo)
Meanwhile, Bush wants to renew tax cuts on income, investments
and people inheriting large estates – cuts now scheduled to expire
at the end of 2010.
The cost of renewing those tax cuts exceeds 300 billion dollars
by 2013, according to congressional scorekeepers.
Still, Bush vowed to achieve a surplus in 2012 by restraining
government spending.
In the new budget, Bush seeks to eliminate or significantly cut
151 programs, although his proposal to kill or sharply slash 141
programs to save 12 billion dollars was rejected by Congress last
year.
The president also seeks 196 billion dollars in savings over the
next five years in the government's health care programs – Medicare
for the elderly and Medicaid for the poor.
But the bid has little chance on Capitol Hill, analysts
believe.
The budget will produce a deficit of 410 billion dollars this
year and 407 billion dollars next year, up sharply from last year's
162.8 billion dollars, a five-year low.
Part of the deficit jump for 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 the House of
Representatives has approved and Bush is urging the Senate to pass
as soon as possible to prevent the economy from slipping into a
recession.
Bush, however, projects that the deficit will decline rapidly
starting in 2010 and will achieve a 48 billion dollar surplus in
2012.
The president's forecast was based on flawed math, Democrats
said. It only included 70 billion dollars for the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan in 2009 and no money after that.
It 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, they
said.
Fixing this tax in 2012 would cost 118 billion dollars, more
than double the surplus Bush is projecting for that year, the
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates.
US federal deficit set a record of 413 billion dollars in 2004.
In his budget sent to Congress in February 2007 for the 2008 fiscal
year, Bush projected the government could eliminate the deficit
completely and return to a surplus by 2012.
Private economists, however, are predicting a relentless rise in
red ink, reflecting the costs of war spending and rising costs for
big government benefits programs such as Social Security and
Medicare as 78 million baby boomers, who were born between 1946 and
1964, reach retirement age.
The CBO forecast last month that the budget deficit for the 2008
fiscal year will increase to 219 billion dollars, well above last
year's five-year low of 162.8 billion dollars.
The US federal budget was in surplus for four years from 1998
through 2001.
(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2008)
