WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush's budget for the coming election year will chart a course for cutting federal deficits in half within the next five years, a top White House budget official said Friday.
Administration officials have been citing that as a goal for several months, even as government red ink has surged to record levels. White House budget chief Joshua Bolten has acknowledged that an unprecedented $500 billion shortfall is likely this year, making the goal a $250 billion deficit by 2009.
Bush's predecessor, President Clinton, presided over four straight years of budget surpluses.
The budget theme is emerging at a time when the Bush administration is under fire from conservatives for allowing spending to grow too rapidly, and for not being aggressive enough in dealing with the red ink.
In an interview, Joel Kaplan, deputy director of the White House budget office, provided few specifics about how the deficit would be cut in half.
Kaplan said Bush would achieve it ``by pursuing very aggressively his pro-growth economic policies, and by leading the Congress toward overall policies of fiscal restraint. And if the Congress adheres to those two programs, we'll be successful in halving the deficit from its '04 peak within that time period.''
Bush will unveil his 2005 budget in early February.
The president's economic growth policies will consist ``primarily'' of proposing again that tax cuts first enacted in 2001 be made permanent, instead of expiring as this decade ends, Kaplan said. That could cost $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years, according to congressional budget analysts.
In interviews this week, lawmakers, aides and lobbyists have said administration officials are trying to keep overall spending increases for agencies at very low levels next year, perhaps at or below the 4 percent range that Bush said last year should be adequate.
Because the economy is expected to continue its rebound, most budget projections in recent months have shown deficits peaking in fiscal 2004, which runs through next Sept. 30, and then gradually growing smaller.
Last July, the White House forecast a deficit of $475 billion in 2004, falling to $238 billion _ half the size _ in 2006.
In August, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected shortfalls peaking at $480 billion in 2004, dropping to $225 billion in 2006.
But such estimates assume lower rates of spending growth than have occurred in recent years and no major setbacks for the economy. They also do not take into account the cost of new tax cuts or unforeseen expenditures such as a major new war.
And the congressional estimates did not include the 10-year, $400 billion cost of the expansion of Medicare to include prescription drug benefits, which had not yet been enacted.
Conservatives have been angered by bills like Medicare and the year-end $373 billion spending package that the House approved this week and awaits the Senate when it returns in January.
``The big story is Republicans have become a big spending party,'' said Stephen Moore, president of the conservative Club for Growth. ``And I think the White House is really the ring leader of the spending spree.''
Administration officials have blamed the return to deficits on the 2001 recession and the costs of fighting terrorism, while Democrats have said Bush's tax cuts have made the situation far worse.
Last year's deficit was $374 billion. Until then, the worst shortfall was $290 billion in 1992.
