"President Bush is getting ready to ask Congress for an additional $80 billion for conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as budget analysts prepare new estimates of the federal deficits that would have loomed even without the wars.
"An $80 billion request would push the total provided to the Defense Department so far for those wars and for U.S. efforts against terrorism elsewhere in the world to more than $280 billion [that seems low. -Ed.]. An additional $25 billion has been provided to rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, all but $4 billion for Iraq.
"The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was expected to project Tuesday that federal shortfalls over the next decade will total perhaps $1 trillion less than the $2.3 trillion it estimated last September, said congressional aides of both parties.
"The agency was also expected to project that this year's shortfall would be close to the $348 billion it forecast last fall. If accurate, that would be the third-largest deficit ever in dollar terms, behind only last year's $412 billion and the $377 billion gap of 2003.
"The deficit estimates for 2005 and for the next 10 years, however, were excluding war costs and other expenses, thanks to quirks in the way the law requires the budget office to make its estimates.
"Also omitted were the price tags of Bush's goal of revamping Social Security, which could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion, and dominate this year's legislative agenda; an estimated $1.8 trillion for extending Bush's tax cuts and easing the impact the alternative minimum tax would have on middle-income Americans; and other expenses."
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