The President's FY 2008 budget submission to Congress was only hours old yesterday when senior Republicans in both the Senate and House stopped just short of declaring it still-born: Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-NH): Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs... The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending. Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE):

The New York Times had a good article summarizing the rise of federal contracting. It's definitely worth a read.

President Bush's FY2008 budget proposal includes a nearly $60 billion Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) increase by apparently eliminating the patch that has held steady the number of taxpayers liable under AMT for the last several years. The President's budget projects FY2008 revenue losses from the current patch at $47.9 billion -- a figure that has been slowly climbing in recent years as inflation exposes greater numbers of taxpayers to the AMT, which is not indexed for inflation.

President Bush's 2008 budget, to be released this morning, proposes to eliminate the deficit by 2012 with many spending cuts in various national health and well-being programs.

• $101.5 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over five years
• $223 million reduction in spending on the Children's Health Insurance Program, with cuts deep enough over five years to eliminate coverage for half of the children enrolled today
• $99 million savings by eliminating a childhood obesity prevention program