A political budget.

Byline: The Register-Guard

President Bush's $2.9 trillion budget for the fiscal year that begins next October is more a political document than a spending plan. It's aimed at painting congressional Democrats into corners - and in this respect it succeeds. Meanwhile, prospects for a productive collaboration on the big fiscal issues of taxes and entitlements are slipping away.

The numbers in Bush's budget add up only when they're squeezed, inflated and distorted beyond reason. For instance, the cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is projected to be $145 billion next year, $50 billion in 2009 and zero after that. The budget anticipates the abrupt and total end to the financial burden of fighting both wars - an expectation that is reflected in none of the president's public statements.

Similarly, the budget anticipates the extension of tax cuts approved in 2001 and 2003. These tax cuts provide relief averaging $160,000 a year to people with incomes of more than $1 million, and will reduce federal revenue by $1.6 trillion over a 10-year period. The president softens the tax cuts' fiscal impact by proposing only a one-year alteration of the alternative minimum tax, which affects increasing numbers of middle-income taxpayers. That omission inflates revenues in 2012 by $90 billion.

Congress shows little stomach for cutting off funding for the war in Iraq, and the fighting in Afghanistan has enjoyed bipartisan support from the beginning. Even if withdrawals began today, war-fighting costs would reach into 2010 and beyond. And Congress is likely to provide relief from the alternative minimum tax, but shows little interest in allowing the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 to expire. These items alone make the budget's projection of a $61 billion surplus in 2012 a fantasy.

Nor is Congress inclined to go along with the president's overall spending plan, which amounts to increasing the budget for the military and restraining spending on just about everything else. The budget includes important increases in federal grants for college tuition and funds for schools with large numbers of low-income students - but the overall growth of domestic spending would be held to a rate of 1 percent, which means most programs would shrink in the face of population growth and inflation. Spending for defense and homeland security, in contrast, would grow 10.7 percent next year and 23 percent over five years, not including the cost of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Congressional Democrats, fearful of being portrayed as weak on defense in advance of the 2008 elections, are likely to approve most of Bush's proposed military spending increases. Then they will approve more generous domestic spending, rejecting the president's proposals to cut such programs as Head Start, home heating assistance and health care for children in low-income families. Bush has never vetoed a spending bill, and the Democrats will have trouble matching the Republicans' profligacy of recent years. The prospect of a surplus in 2012, already an illusion, will recede still further.

The budget will achieve its political aim of putting the Democrats in a position to be labeled as tax-increasers, budget-busters or both. Meanwhile, $3 trillion has been added to the national debt since the federal government last posted a surplus in 2001, and the pending insolvency of Social Security and Medicare remain unaddressed. Bush and Congress have a key moment of opportunity before the next election campaign shifts into high gear. The president's budget reflects a willingness to let that opportunity pass.