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

Based on the president's recent announcement of his plan to deploy an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq, CBO has released a report detailing the projected costs of such an escalation. CBO Director, Peter Orszag, predicts that the president's plan to increase troop levels could cost as much as $27 billion.

This afternoon, after almost two weeks of floor debate and 200 filed amendments, the Senate passed S.2, the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, by a vote of 94-3. The bill comprises:

• a set of increases in the federal minimum wage to be phased in in three stages, rising to $5.85 an hour 60 days after enactment, then to $6.55 an hour one year after that, and $7.25 an hour two years later