The FY09 budget proposal submitted Monday by President Bush is the talk of the town (leaving the the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday results and aftermath aside). Not so much because it is likely to be enacted, but because it provides talking points opportunities for everyone. Below are figures from the Senate Budget Committee that express the president's broad priorites in stark terms. The defense figure is the highest in real terms since World War II; the domestic cuts belie the administration's concerns about a recession...

After we pointed out a number of proposed budget cuts that are going nowhere, there have been a few news articles this week about other specific budget cuts proposed by President Bush in his FY 2009 budget that we missed. These also have about a zero percent chance of being enacted by Congress. Those proposed cuts include:

• Corporation for Public Broadcasting: Bush would cut 50 percent of the CPBs $400 million budget in FY 2009 and cut $220 million from the $420 million already planned for 2010. (See NYT: Public Broadcasters Prepare to Fight Federal Budget Cuts)
• Appalachian Regional Commission: Bush would cut the federal portion of the ARCs budget by 11 percent, dropping it from $73 million to $65 million in FY 2009. Congress has already authorized much higher amounts for the ARC (House - $85 million, Senate - $102 million), which runs grant programs to boost access to housing, health care, the Internet and other services in a 13 state, 410-county area. (See CQ ($): Congress Unlikely to Accept Cuts to Appalachian Development Panel)

Since the president's FY 2009 budget request was mostly a rehash of old policies and proposals we've already spent time debunking in previous years, we've been looking for some new angles with which to view the president's budget. As I was sitting at my desk looking at the budget books in my office, the actual length of the main budget volume released this year jumped out at me. Or I should say, it didn't jump out at me. Turns out the main budget book for the FY 2009 budget is the shortest one ever released by the president. At 170 pages, it is more than 45 percent shorter than the average length of the budget book released each year by President Bush (which came in at 311 pages. Not sure what one can make of this change, particularly since the FY 2008 budget is also much shorter than the Bush average. This particular part of the president's budget proposal has evolved during the Bush administration to be a fancy, glossy, picture-filed advertisement for the administration's achievements and priorities, with little hard budgetary information. It is developed, I suppose, to help the administration put the best spin on their budget proposal and successes. I wonder if the Bush administration is tired of actively selling their misguided priorities, particularly in this final year and that is the reason for the shorter volume? Or perhaps they have realized they really don't have many budget achievements that they should be bragging about?

Had the president used realistic assumptions about economic growth in 2008, yesterday's headlines covering the FY 2009 budget request would have been: "Record Deficit Projected." Instead, the president chose to use a somewhat optimistic GDP growth rate of 2.7 percent, which produces a higher revenue forecast and subsequently lower deficit of $410 billion. If, on the other hand, the president chose to employ the CBO's numbers (GDP growth of 1.7%), the projected deficit for 2008 would have been a jaw-dropping $426.4 billion, significantly surpassing 2004's $413 billion deficit.