Bush seeks .9 tril in '08 budget proposal

Plan would hike funding for war, cut health costs

Martin Crutsinger

Associated Press

Feb. 5, 2007 12:00 AM

WASHINGTON - President Bush will send Congress a .9 trillion spending request today that seeks billions of dollars more to fight the Iraq war and tries to restrain the spiraling cost of the government's big health care programs.

Responding to the new reality of a Democratic-controlled Congress, Bush will propose balancing the budget in five years, matching a goal put forward by Democratic leaders. But Bush would achieve that feat while protecting his cherished first-term tax cuts.

The arrival of the massive four-volume set of green budget books, which will cover the budget year that begins Oct. 1, will be followed by months of debate in Congress. Democrats charged that Bush wants to make painful cuts across a wide swath of government programs while protecting tax cuts that will make the deficit worse after 2012.

"This budget is plunging us toward a cliff that will take us right into a chasm of debt," Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D., said in an interview Sunday.

"In real terms, Bush's plan is going to have very substantial cuts by the fifth year of this budget in all of the domestic priorities from education and health care to law enforcement and veterans," Conrad said. "With Democrats in control, we will have different priorities."

The federal deficit hit an all-time high under Bush of 3 billion in 2004. It has been declining since then.

The 2008 budget proposal projects it will continue to decline and show a surplus in 2012, three years after Bush leaves office.

To accomplish those reductions, Bush would allow only modest growth in government programs outside of defense and homeland security. He is proposing the elimination of or sharp reductions in 141 programs for a saving over five years of billion, although Congress has rejected many of the same proposals in the past two years.

Bush also will seek to trim spending on farm subsidies by billion over five years, mainly by reducing payments to wealthier farmers, an effort certain to spark resistance among farm state lawmakers.

Bush's budget would achieve nearly 0 billion in savings over five years by trimming increases in Medicare, the health insurance program for 43 million retirees and disabled, and Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor.

The restraints in Medicare spending would total billion over five years, while the savings in Medicaid would total .7 billion.

These proposals are certain to generate stiff opposition in Congress, which refused to go along with smaller Medicare reductions Bush proposed last year. The administration said it is trying to slow average annual increases in Medicare over the next 10 years to 6.7 percent instead of the projected 7.4 percent.

For the first time, Bush will spell out details of the spending requests for Iraq and Afghanistan in the budget books. Previously, he has lumped that spending into supplemental requests with less detail.

Bush said he would ask for an additional 0 billion for Iraq and the global war on terrorism this year, on top of billion already sought. For 2008, that spending would drop to 5 billion and fall to billion in 2009, although administration officials conceded that the 2008 and 2009 requests could go higher depending on the progress of the war effort.

Rob Portman, White House budget director, said Sunday that the spending includes the cost of increasing troop strength in Iraq by 21,500, an increase that opponents want Congress to go on record as opposing in upcoming non-binding resolutions. The administration projects that the troop increase will cost .6 billion this year, a figure that critics say is too low.

"We believe the president's plan will be successful," Portman said on CNN. "We're giving Congress exactly what Congress asked for on a bipartisan basis, more transparency as to our costs and more information."

WASHINGTON - President Bush's proposed .9 trillion budget contains .1 million for modernization of the San Luis port of entry.

But only .8 million would be made available to the state, local and tribal governments through the Homeland Security Grant Program, a 63.9 percent drop from this year.

Bush also again seeks to "zero out" funding for the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, a grant program that helps states and localities pay for incarcerating undocumented criminals. The budget plan also would eliminate money for a program that made million available this year to state and county governments in Arizona, New Mexico, California and Texas for costs linked to prosecuting drug and other cases along the Southwestern border.

And although some education, transportation, health and social programs would see modest spending boosts in Arizona, others would see funding kept at current levels or decreased.

The plan has been sent to Congress.

"The president's proposal puts our nation on track to balance the budget by 2012 by restraining spending and continuing the tax relief we've passed," Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., said in a written statement.

Brian deVallance, director of Democratic Gov. Janet Napolitano's Washington office, said, "A key here is that Arizona is now the fastest-growing state in the nation." He said the federal budget should reflect that.

DeVallance said the Governor's Office will be scrutinizing the proposal's state-by-state numbers this week.

The president's plan also calls for raising funding for the state's Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (a 0.06 percent increase) and the State Administrative Matching Grants for Food Program (a 4.3 percent increase).

It proposes cutting by 4.5 percent the Improving Teacher Quality Grants for Arizona.

Under the president's plan, there would be no change in funding for the state's special-education grants, the State Children Health Insurance Program, and the Head Start early-childhood education program.

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OK here is the math.

.9 trillion = 2,900,000,000,000

a trillion is 1,000 billion

a billion is 1,000 million

300 million U.S. population = 300,000,000

divide the long numbers

2,900,000,000,000 / 300,000,000 = ,666 per person

you can simplify the math by removing 8 trailing zeros from each number to see that the ball park answer is about ,000 per person

29,000 / 3 = ,666 per person