In the months leading up to the November elections, President Bush stated numerous times that if reelected, he would cut the budget deficit in half by 2009. This announcement came in a year that saw a record high deficit of 413 billion, not to mention continued tax cuts and an increasingly expensive war in Iraq.
Many budget and economic analysts have speculated as to how Bush plans to cut the deficit in half, all while continuing to fight a war, pushing to make tax cuts permanent, and pursuing expensive social security reform. This excellent article in yesterday's New York Times discusses the fact that Bush's plan to cut the deficit in half may rely more upon the manipulation of numbers and less upon concrete, responsible fiscal policies.
