Editorial: Celebrating too soon

Friday, July 14, 2006 | 7:37 a.m.

F or a president who erased record budget surpluses and replaced them with huge annual deficits in a few short years, George Bush did a lot of celebrating this week.

Bush claimed that his tax cuts spurred economic growth, which increased federal revenues and resulted in a projected $296 billion deficit for this year, down from a $423 billion projection made in February. Bush said his plan to cut the deficit in half by 2009 is even ahead of schedule.

But the president's empty claim to the title of fiscal hawk is laughable - and ignores a looming budget crisis in this country.

Let's put aside for now the fact that Bush is pleased that the nation is $296 billion in the red. "Only Washington Republicans would think a $300 billion deficit is good news," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid said.

Let's instead start with the fact that Bush's projections about halving the deficit by 2009 aren't even likely to come true. His administration has a track record of badly miscalculating deficit projections for two years and beyond, critics of his fiscal policies have correctly noted.

That's partly because the administration plays games with budget projections. For example, one of Bush's tricks has been to omit the cost of the war in Iraq in his budget forecasts. In this more recent example, Bush claims that tax cuts are reducing the deficit, even though many budget experts say the tax cuts have the opposite effect. Even the fine print of the Bush administration's own Treasury Department analysis this week noted that tax cuts do not pay for themselves in the form of economic growth.

But the worst news of all is that even White House officials acknowledge that their little announcement this week ignored the big picture - deficits are likely to soar beyond 2009 as Baby Boomers retire and put a crushing weight on dwindling Social Security and Medicare trust funds.

At a time when Bush should be working to balance the budget over the long term and tackling tough questions about the nation's fiscal security, he is fiddling with decreasing the deficit in the short term. The president's song and dance this week was staged as a distraction from what could become a Bush legacy - the deepest deficit hole the nation has ever known.