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Bush Budget Includes Huge Increase for "War On Terrorism," Homeland Security
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| Bush’s military budget will increase by 14.5 percent, the biggest gain since 1982 when Ronald Reagan was president.
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. President George W. Bush Monday submitted a $2.13 trillion budget to Congress, including $27 billion in new spending Monday for the administration's declared war on terrorism and homeland security.
But that overall amount masks wide differences, with favored programs slated to receive huge increases while scores of agencies would be subjected to big cuts, including highway construction and maintenance and environmental projects.
"We're unified in Washington on winning this war," Bush told cheering troops on a visit to Elgin Air Force Base in Florida. "One way to express our unity is for Congress to set the military budget, the defense of the United States, as the No. 1 priority and fully fund my request. My budget provides the resources to combat terrorism at home, to protect our people and preserve our constitutional freedoms."
About seven cents of every dollar in the Pentagon's proposed $379 billion budget is for the war on terrorism, including more than one billion dollars to continue flying fighter aircraft over parts of the United States as a precaution against a repeat of the September 11 attacks.
The defense budget Bush submitted to Congress on Monday would add $48 billion in budget authority to the Pentagon's current spending, roughly a 14 percent increase - the biggest boost for the military in two decades. Bush would add more each succeeding year, reaching $451 billion for 2007.
The spending blueprint for the 2003 budget year that begins October 1 reflects other administration priorities besides fighting terrorism: a 4.1 percent pay raise for troops; defenses against missile attack; accelerated development of pilotless planes for surveillance and attack; and billions more for a new generation of stealthy jet fighters and Navy warships.
The spending blueprint is the opening act in what will be months of wrangling in Congress. The massive five-inch high stack of budget books had barely reached congressional desks before Democrats started complaining.
After four years of surpluses, Bush's budget is a nearly four percent increase from the previous year. But it also projects the government will slip back into deficit through 2004, including a $106 billion deficit this year.
Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a Democrat from North Dakota, likened the administration's budget accounting to tactics employed by the bankrupt Enron Corp.
"Enron got into trouble because they didn't fully disclose debt they have, and that is precisely what the federal government is doing," Conrad said. "I was struck by how this budget takes the country down the same road."
He contended the administration would raid Social Security and Medicare surpluses to cover shortfalls in the rest of government.
Democrats, who control the U.S. Senate, will be able to block at least some of Bush's proposals as the budget process advances to Capitol Hill.
"The budget for 2003 recognizes the new realities confronting our nation," Bush said in his message to Congress. "It is a plan to fight a war we did not seek - but a war we are determined to win."
Under the budget, spending for programs other than automatic payments such as Social Security and Medicare would increase by nine percent in the next fiscal year, which starts October 1. While military and homeland security spending would surge by 12 percent and 111 percent respectively, the budget for everything else would increase by a meager two percent.
Bush is reviving his hotly contested economic stimulus plan, despite signs the economy may recover without it. He also called on Congress to extend income tax rate reductions, marriage penalty relief, child tax credits and estate tax cuts that were part of the $1.35 trillion package that Congress passed in 2001. The extensions would cost $344 billion.
Democrats warned these tax cuts and accompanying higher debt interest costs could drain more than $800 billion from Social Security and Medicare surpluses, weakening the retirement and health care programs as the baby boom generation approaches retirement.
"You're playing a very risky game," warned Democratic Sen. Christopher Dodd of Connecticut.
While Bush blamed much of the erosion on the country's first recession in a decade and the costs of waging a war against terrorism, Democrats pointed to Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax cut. They said the administration, to protect those tax cuts, was seeking unnecessarily severe budget cuts across a wide swath of government programs.
The president's spending plan for the next fiscal year came wrapped in a red-white-and-blue cover depicting the American flag - and for the first time ever featured color photos of everything from military jets to ordinary Americans in an effort to bring the mind-numbing parade of budget charts to life.
Defense would get a $48 billion boost in its spending and ability to award contracts, the biggest increase in two decades. Spending to make Americans more secure at home would nearly double to $37.7 billion.
The military budget would increase by 14.5 percent, the biggest gain since 1982 when Ronald Reagan was president, with seven cents of every dollar in the $379 billion proposal going for the war on terrorism.
The total earmarked for combating terrorism next year is $27 billion, of which $10 billion is considered a war reserve. Another eight billion dollars would be used to protect U.S. troops abroad and at home and nine billion dollars would pay for long-term bills already created by the 4-month-old war in Afghanistan.
The $27 billion compares with $4.6 billion in anti-terrorism spending in the 2000 defense budget. Last year, that category of spending was $5.2 billion, although it was boosted by $13.7 billion shortly after the September 11 attacks. This year's budget has $10.5 billion in this category.
The Pentagon says it has spent about seven billion dollars so far on the war in Afghanistan, which began October 7. The costs have grown so rapidly, officials say, that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld already has decided he must ask Congress for more money as early as March.
Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, are to appear before the Senate and House Armed Services committees this week to promote Bush's budget proposal.
If approved by Congress as expected, it would be the largest increase in military spending since Reagan's Cold War-era buildup 20 years ago, and would augur well for the top military contractors - Lockheed Martin Corp., Boeing Co., Raytheon Co., General Dynamics Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. 
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