Bush's budget proposal

CNN - Budget's ups and downs leave big chunk for war

The Pentagon is the big winner in President Bush's proposed budget for next year, while domestic items such as aid to schools and grants to local governments will get slight increases.

Medicare and Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, would shoulder modest but politically difficult cost curbs in the budget the White House is submitting to Congress on Monday.

It is important to remember, when you hear about the President's budget proposal, that it is only a proposal. The actual budget comes from the Congress. The President can propose whatever he wants but that doesn't mean it will pass Congress. And, of course, the President knows this.

"There's this continuing deception about our real fiscal condition," the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said in an interview Saturday. "Over and over again we see things left out of his budget that we know are going to have to be dealt with," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-North Dakota.

It is easy for the President to publicly present a budget that claims to full fill the promise of moving toward a balanced budget, even if he knows that the proposal in untenable. Then he can claim that he tried, but the fiscally irresponsible Democrats kept his budget from passing.