Bush releases $2.5 trillion budget plan

WASHINGTON -- President Bush's $2.5 trillion budget is shaping up as his most austere, trying to restrain spending across a wide swath of government from popular farm subsidies to poor people's health programs.\nVice President Dick Cheney on Sunday defended the plan against Democratic criticism that Bush had to seek steep cuts in scores of federal programs because he is unwilling to roll back first-term tax cuts that opponents contend primarily benefited the wealthy.\nThe budget's submission to Congress on Monday will set off months of intense debate. Lawmakers from both parties can be expected to vigorously fight to protect their favorite programs.\n"This is the tightest budget that has been submitted since we got here," Cheney told "Fox News Sunday."\n"It is a fair, reasonable, responsible, serious piece of effort. It's not something we have done with a meat ax, nor are we suddenly turning our backs on the most needy people in our society."\nThe president, who campaigned for re-election on a pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2009, is targeting 150 government programs for either outright elimination or sharp cutbacks.\nThe five-year projections in the budget will show the deficit declining to about $230 billion in 2009, when a new president takes office.\nThose projections do not take into account some big-ticket items: the military costs incurred in Iraq and Afghanistan, the price of making Bush's first term tax cuts permanent, or the transition costs for his No. 1 domestic priority, overhauling Social Security.\nSen. Kent Conrad, the top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said Bush's budget "talks about the next five years of reducing deficits, but what that hides is what happens after that five-year window. The cost of everything he advocates explodes."\nSen. John McCain, R-Ariz., praised the administration's willingness to tackle the deficit. "I'm glad the president is coming over with a very austere budget. I hope we in Congress will have the courage to support it," he told ABC's "This Week."\nJoshua Bolten, Bush's budget director, told The Associated Press that when the budget is released, the administration will provide some estimates of the cost in increased government borrowing for the president's proposal to allow younger workers to set up private savings accounts.\nBut he said the administration cannot provide total cost figures for the Social Security overhaul because all the elements of the plan have yet to be decided upon.\nCheney would not confirm estimates the overhaul could cost $4.5 billion in additional government borrowing over 20 years.\nBush's budget will restrain the growth in discretionary programs to less than 2.3 percent. But because defense and homeland security are set for increases above that amount, the rest of government programs will see outright cuts or tiny gains far below the rate of inflation.\nOne of the biggest battles is certain to occur in the area of payments and other assistance to farmers, which the administration wants to trim by $587 million in 2006 and by $5.7 billion over the next decade.\nThose payments go to farmers growing a wide range of crops from cotton, rice and corn to soybeans and wheat.\nThe United States and other rich countries have come under criticism for these agriculture subsidies from poor countries. In the current round of global trade talks, these nations are pressing for the subsidies' elimination.