The House and Senate Budget Committees will soon turn to the congressional budget resolution for Fiscal Year 2009. The draft versions of the budget resolution, to be offered by House Budget chief Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Senate Budget head Kent Conrad (D-ND), are likely to be considerably different from President Bush's unrealistic budget proposal submitted to Congress in February.

The budget resolution is a non-binding blueprint in which Congress charts out a fiscal direction for the federal government over a five-year period, but it also sets the rules for debate on fiscal issues and establishes tax and spending parameters for the year ahead. In 2008, on crucial issues such as balancing the budget, war funding, the reach of the alternative minimum tax (AMT), or whether revenue can be boosted without raising taxes, Democrats will be challenged to explain why their budget is more realistic than what the White House offered.

The president's FY 09 budget proposal to Congress showed a balanced budget, with a $48 billion surplus, by FY 2012. Democrats and some Republicans in Congress rightly criticized the proposal, arguing it was based on some improbable assumptions:

• Hundreds of billions of dollars in federal revenue from allowing the AMT to go "un-patched" — thereby affecting tens of millions of middle-class taxpayers
• Only $70 billion in future war funding for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fronts in the global war on terror — far less than current spending requests
• Stagnant or even reduced domestic discretionary spending in real terms

Spratt and Conrad have indicated their budget blueprints both set a goal of a balanced budget by FY 2012, often using the same spending and revenue assumptions. Regarding war costs, for example, Conrad says the $70 billion makes more sense "in the context of our policy than [Bush's] policy because he intends to stay in Iraq. Some of his people told us, 'Think Korea,' when we asked how long might we stay… So the President has played hide the ball in the budget on war cost with respect to his policy."

On the AMT, the Democrats will likely assume passage of a fully offset patch in FY 09. The assumption of an extended AMT patch is politically warranted, but there is no reason to expect the GOP to permit it to be paid for with tax increases elsewhere in the budget. Democrats will also assume, like last year, that they can balance the budget without allowing all of the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts to expire in 2010. Few experts, however, think sufficient revenue can be raised from the limited roll-backs the Democrats have proposed to balance the budget.

Another budget resolution strategy for Congress to achieve fiscal goals is through budget reconciliation instructions. Democrats' fiscal goals were stymied in 2007 due to Republican senators whose filibuster threats regularly killed legislation intended to reduce the deficit. Many of these legislative proposals had support from more than half the Senate, but the rules of that chamber require 60 votes to defeat a filibuster. To overcome this deadlock, Democrats can use special instructions contained in a budget resolution directing committees to move legislation that would reduce the deficit and be protected from filibusters.

This means that securing offsets for the AMT legislation and the renewable energy tax package that has passed the House three times already would be far easier. But this strategy has its risks. Democrats, with their one-vote majority in the Senate, have no room for error.

Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), for example, opposes offsetting renewable energy tax breaks by raising taxes on oil and gas companies, as was tried in an energy bill last year; she does not want that proposal included as a reconciliation instruction. And Senate Finance Chair Max Baucus (D-MT) calls trying to pass an offset AMT patch "a waste of time" because the Senate proved in 2007 that such an approach was futile. Baucus might be right, as even if fully offset energy tax or AMT bills are cleared, President Bush would likely veto them.

The antagonism over budget priorities witnessed in 2007 will likely repeat itself in 2008, especially since the president has already threatened to veto any spending bills exceeding his requests. Almost no one in Washington expects Congress and the president to agree on an FY 09 budget anytime this year. As has been typical of the debate over the federal budget recently, House Appropriations Chair Rep. David Obey (D-WI) has vowed to wait "until a new president is in office who will act like an adult" before negotiating an FY 09 federal budget.

Under these circumstances, there is little reason for Democrats not to include "message" instructions that highlight differences in fiscal priorities with their GOP colleagues and the president. Among the message instructions under consideration are:

• Spending $20 billion to prevent a 10 percent cut in Medicare payments to physicians as well as other Medicare changes
• Adding $35 billion for another stimulus package featuring additional money for the unemployed, food stamps, and heating subsidies for the poor
• Providing $40-60 billion for the highway trust fund and other infrastructure projects
• Expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program

Recent election-year history points up the challenges facing budget-makers in Congress in 2008. Republicans failed to produce a House-Senate agreement in 2004 and 2006, while in 2002, Democrats in the Senate and Republicans in the House could not overcome their differences to pass a budget.

Even if a resolution is enacted, it may not produce a realistic roadmap to a balanced budget in the next few years. Indeed, it may not even produce a viable budget for the next fiscal year. But it will quite likely serve as a proxy fight for the post-election battle over the future of President Bush's tax cuts, most of which expire at the end of 2010, as well as other fiscal issues that will be played out over the course of the 2008 election year. These issues, like the FY 09 budget, will ultimately be resolved in 2009 by the next Congress and the next president.