WASHINGTON — The $2.9-trillion budget President Bush unveiled Monday highlighted major policy differences with the Democrats in control of Capitol Hill and set the stage for vigorous battles over healthcare, war costs and deficit reduction in the last two years of his presidency.
Although presidents' budgets have always been largely a theoretical exercise -- the Constitution gives Congress the job of passing spending bills -- they help set the terms of Washington's heated budget debates. The heat flared up immediately Monday as Republicans lined up squarely behind Bush's budget for fiscal 2008, while Democrats castigated it as both heartless and fiscally irresponsible.
The sharp divide seemed to shatter the spirit of bipartisanship that both parties had cultivated since the Democrats captured control of Congress in November's elections.
Democrats complained that they saw no evidence of declining war costs, and they railed against Bush's single biggest spending constraint: holding down the growth of Medicare.
"This budget represents more of the same wrong priorities: placing a higher priority on huge tax cuts for multimillionaires than on urgent national needs," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco). "Democrats are prepared to work with Republicans to make the tough choices that will return our budgets to fiscal responsibility, but today's budget from the president is simply not the right approach."
The coming face-off over outlays for the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, social programs and tax cuts will offer a preview to the debates likely to dominate the 2008 elections.
Bush, in his written budget message to Congress, challenged lawmakers to balance the budget by 2012, as his plan would, without raising taxes.
"My formula for a balanced budget," he said, "reflects the priorities of our country at this moment in its history: protecting the homeland and fighting terrorism, keeping the economy strong with low taxes and keeping spending under control while making federal programs more effective."
Bush's plan to balance the budget in five years echoed the plan advanced last year by congressional Democrats during Congress' attempt to write its own budget for 2007. The Democrats' plan died when Congress was unable to agree on either party's budget.
Bush proposed that the government spend $2.9 trillion next year -- that's $5.5 million a minute -- on revenues of $2.7 trillion.
