Bush Plans Add to U.S. Red Ink -- CBO Study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -

President Bush (news - web sites)'s budget plans, including making tax cuts permanent, would contribute to a rise of more than $1 trillion in the federal deficit over the next decade, according to a congressional report requested by Democrats and criticized by Republicans.

In a report released on Thursday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (news - web sites) forecast the deficit would grow $3.6 trillion over the next decade, based on assumptions provided by Democrats that included Bush policy proposals.
That is $1.3 trillion more than the office forecast earlier this month, in a report that did not use the Democratic assumptions.
Republicans immediately attacked the report and accused Democrats of playing election-year politics. The record budget deficit is a significant issue in the presidential election campaign.
The Democrats asked the budget office to rework its recent budget outlook with a new analysis that included a permanent extension of Bush's tax cuts, as proposed by the president.
The Democratic assumptions also included reduced estimates for the wars in Iraq (news - web sites) and Afghanistan (news - web sites) compared to the previous CBO report, and reform of the alternative minimum tax, which experts say will cost billions of dollars. The Bush administration is studying ways to reform the tax.
Bush has said his economic policies would cut the annual deficit in half over five years. But the latest CBO analysis says the deficit in 2009 would only be reduced to $339 billion from an expected record $422 billion in the 2004 fiscal year and would not be halved in 10 years.
"There is no credible way to dispute the fundamental conclusion that this administration's policies call for large deficits with no plan or prospect of bringing the budget back to balance," said the lawmaker who asked for the report, South Carolina Rep. John Spratt (news, bio, voting record), the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.
Republicans were furious and said Democrats were making the request purely for political gain.
"This is a political ploy by the Democrats. We have a plan to bring the deficit down and they have a lot of rhetoric," said House Budget Committee spokesman Sean Spicer.
"Just a few days ago CBO presented its midsession review. We have a report. We know where we stand," he said.
Spratt has not requested a report using plans put forward by Democrat presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites).
Kerry has said he would keep middle-class tax cuts and reduce the corporate income tax rate, but increase taxes on wealthy Americans.
Bush has charged that Kerry's spending plans would cost more than $1 trillion and require across-the-board tax increases.
The CBO's earlier report assumed that the Iraq war would cost around $1.2 trillion over the decade which Bush's budget did not include. But Spratt said this was unrealistic, and in this latest report asked CBO to assume $315 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Asked if he was playing politics, Spratt said "most of what we do is political, but this is relevant."