WASHINGTON - President Bush sent Congress a $2.4 trillion election-year budget on Monday featuring big increases for defense and homeland security and a pledge to cut this year's projected record deficit of $521 billion in half by 2009.
Bush blamed the soaring budget deficits on the 2001 recession and the costs of fighting a war on terrorism. His budget director said as much as $50 billion more in red ink will be added to the budget's projected $364 billion deficit for 2005 when the costs of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan get added in.
"The reason we are where we are is because we went through a recession, we were attacked and we're fighting a war. Those are high hurdles for a budget and for a country to overcome," Bush told his Cabinet.
He said he was confident he could cut the deficit in half in five years by working with Congress "to bring fiscal discipline to the appropriations process."
White House budget director Joshua Bolten said the administration will not make a request for a wartime supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan until after the November elections. He said $50 billion would probably be the "upper limit" of what would be needed in 2005. If that level is reached, it would mean Bush's $364 billion deficit target for 2005 would rise to $414 billion.
Bolten said "hopefully the needs will be less" for military costs in Afghanistan and Iraq next year. But he said "the uncertainty of the security situation" prompted the administration to wait and request a supplemental appropriation rather than include estimated costs in Monday's budget request.
Democrats, however, charged that Bush left the war spending out of the budget in order to make the deficit appear smaller.
To battle the soaring deficits, Bush proposed squeezing scores of government programs and sought outright spending cuts in seven of 16 Cabinet-level agencies. The Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were targeted for the biggest reductions in discretionary spending.
In total, Bolten said Bush's budget would eliminate 65 government programs for a saving of $4.9 billion. The budget proposes trimming spending in 63 other programs.
Bolten said the administration targeted duplicative programs and those not achieving their objectives. A total of 38 education programs are targeted for elimination.
The president declared that his spending blueprint, which will set off months of heated debate in Congress, advances his three highest priorities - winning the war on terror, strengthening homeland defenses and boosting the economic recovery.
"Our nation remains at war," Bush said in his budget message. "This nation has committed itself to the long war against terror. And we will see that war to its inevitable conclusion: the destruction of the terrorists."
The president's plan for the 2005 budget year, which begins next Oct. 1, proposes spending $2.4 trillion for all government activities, up 3.5 percent from the current year. Revenues will total $2.04 trillion, a sizable 13.2 percent increase that the administration forecasts will occur from growing tax receipts powered by a stronger economy.
The president's budget, featuring a line drawing of the White House in forest green on the cover, states that stronger economic growth and reductions in general government spending will produce steady improvements in the deficit. It projected the deficit would decline to $237 billion in 2009, a cut of 55 percent from this year's projected $521 billion record.
Democrats immediately attacked the spending proposal for what they viewed as harmful reductions in various government programs and the president's insistence on making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent at a cost projected in the budget of more than $900 billion over 10 years.
"This administration pledged that its tax cuts and policy choices would not turn record surpluses into record deficits, but this budget shows that's exactly what's happened," said Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.
