Check, Please?

Bam! $2.9 trillion is the 2007 US budget, of which $481.1 billion is earmarked for the Defense Department, $49 billion higher than last year. This number, of course, is still smaller than the approximately $700 billion for the Department of Health and Human Services and the $656 for Social Security, but the DoD number also doesn't count the $93 billion for this year and $145 billion for next year which has been requested as supplemental funding for the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, money which doesn't need to be counted in the budget because it's - well - supplemental.

It is staggering that the Bush administration claims the budget will be balanced in 2012 while "...the budget package projects no spending on Iraq and Afghanistan after 2009. “There will be no timetables set,” Mr. Bush said in a question-answer session after a Cabinet meeting this morning. “We don’t want to send mixed signals to an enemy, or to a struggling democracy, or to our troops.”"

Now, not wanting to send mixed signals is fine and understandable. But if you're not counting that spending past 2009, how can you rationally believe that the budget will be balanced in 2012? How can you account for that spending which, by your very own admission, you are refusing to count, like some child trying to ignore something and pretend it isn't there? When did Republicans become profligate spenders and Democrats the ones trying to rein them in?