Bush sends Congress $2.9 trillion budget

WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Monday unveiled a $2.9 trillion spending plan that devotes billions more to fighting the war in Iraq but pinches pennies on programs promised to voters by Democrats now running Congress. Democrats widely attacked the plan, and even a prominent Republican conceded it faced bleak prospects.\nBush's spending plan would make his first-term tax cuts permanent, at a cost of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. He is seeking $78 billion in savings in the government's big health-care programs -- Medicare and Medicaid -- over the next five years, in part by increasing premiums for higher-income Medicare recipients.\nRelease of the budget in four massive volumes kicks off months of debate in which Democrats, now in control of both the House and Senate for the first time in Bush's presidency, made clear that they have significantly different views on spending and taxes.\n"The president's budget is filled with debt and deception, disconnected from reality and continues to move America in the wrong direction," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, D-N.D.\nHouse Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt, D-S.C., said, "I doubt that Democrats will support this budget, and frankly, I will be surprised if Republicans rally around it either."\nSen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, agreed with the bleak assessment of Bush's prospects of getting Congress to approve his budget as proposed.\n"Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs," said Gregg, who contended there is a wide gulf between the two parties. "The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending."\nThe president insisted he had made the right choices to keep the nation secure from terrorist threats and the economy growing.\n"I strongly believe Congress needs to listen to a budget which says no tax increase and a budget, because of fiscal discipline, that can be balanced in five years," Bush told reporters after meeting with his Cabinet.\nJust as Iraq has come to dominate Bush's presidency, military spending was a major element in the president's new spending request. Bush was seeking a Pentagon budget of $624.6 billion for 2008, more than one-fifth of the total budget, up from $600.3 billion in 2007.\nFor the first time, the Pentagon included details for the upcoming budget year on how much the Iraq 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.\nBut White House spokesman Tony Fratto cautioned that the 2008 projection was likely to change. "We're not saying the number for '08 is the final number."\nThe Bush budget includes just $50 billion for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in 2009 and no money after that year. But the president rejected the suggestion that the administration was setting a timetable for troop withdrawal.\n"There will be no timetable set," Bush told reporters. He said a timetable would send the wrong signal to the enemy, the struggling Iraq democracy and the troops.\nBush projected a deficit in the current year of $244 billion, just slightly lower than last year's $248 billion imbalance. For 2008, the budget year that begins next Oct. 1, Bush sees another slight decline in the deficit to $239 billion. He sees that decline continuing over the next three years until the budget records a surplus of $61 billion in 2012, three years after Bush has left office.\nDemocrats, however, challenged those projections, contending that Bush only achieves a surplus by leaving out the billions of dollars Congress is expected to spend to keep the alternative minimum tax from ensnaring millions of middle-class taxpayers. His budget includes an AMT fix for just one year.