In the Washington Post today, Ruth Marcus recognizes that Bush is relying on a tax increase via the AMT to claim that he can balance the budget without raising taxes. Looked at another way, what the Bush tax cuts give to taxpayers, the AMT grabs back. By 2012, if it isn't changed, the AMT would take back almost one-third of the Bush tax cuts...it would take back more than half of the tax cut for people making between $100,000 and $200,000.

President Bush's FY 2008 budget proposal provides numerous projections calculated to prove the plausibility of his overall goal of eliminating the deficit budget by 2012 -- the only problem being the implausibility of the projections themselves. We have highlighted in our commentary on the budget and elsewhere some of the more conspicuously convenient calculations regarding war spending and AMT reform. CBPP expands upon the latter point in a paper released today, and relates it to a more plausibile assumption -- the extension of Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts -- arguing that

Yesterday, President Bush released his budget for FY 2008. Many of the president's budgetary priorities are hostile toward Americans, but three will particularly hinder the federal government's ability to regulate.

• Bush is calling for a $300 million slash in the EPA's budget. In a press statement, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson defended the cut, proving he is more interested in toeing the administration line than sticking up for his own agency or protecting the environment.
• Bush is also continuing his war on climate science by cutting the budget of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) by seven percent, according to BNA news service (subscription).
• Finally, Bush is calling for only a nominal increase in the budget of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the independent agency that is charged with recalling potentially dangerous products. The increase amounts to a budget cut when adjusted for inflation. According to BNA, the proposal includes calls for the lowest staffing levels in the agency's history.