Funny, His Balanced Budget Plan Assumes and Depends on It It's getting increasingly hard to sort out fact, fiction, and fantasy when it comes to Bush and the budget. Back in February, Mr. Bush proposed a five-year spending plan that projected a balanced budget by the year 2012. One of the key assumptions in the plan was that the AMT would go unpatched by Congress and continue to produce ever-increasing tax revenues -- a fiscal future fantasy. Without those revenues, the Bush budget would never be balanced. Of course, everyone knew Congress would patch the AMT. Bush's projected revenue stream could nevertheless continue -- but only if the patch were paid for. OK, now fast-forward from February to this afternoon, when the White House issued a veto threat against a paid-for patch that protects the revenue stream the Bush budget depends on to reach balance by 2012, saying that "the Administration is extremely disappointed that the House of Representatives continues to demand large tax increases as the price for protecting 25 million taxpayers from an unintended, unexpected, and unwelcome tax increase averaging $2,000." "Unintended, unexpected, and unwelcome"? Is this now how Bush views his own 2012 balanced-budget plan?