Bush Wants Balance Budget by 2012

President George W. Bush, and first lady Laura Bush, prepare to board Air Force One Monday Jan. 1, 2007 in Waco, Texas. (AP Photo/Duane A. Laverty) (Duane A. Laverty - AP)

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Wednesday he'll submit a proposal to balance the budget in five years and exhorted Congress to "end the dead of night process" of quietly tucking expensive pet projects into spending bills.

The president's spokesman, meanwhile, said Bush would talk in his Jan. 23 State of the Union address about making spending on the Iraq war "as transparent as possible."

Lawmakers and the independent, bipartisan Iraq Study Group have criticized the Bush administration for funding the war through emergency supplemental bills, instead of including the costs in the administration's yearly formal budget request for running the government. That means the full cost of the war is not included in the administration's deficit calculations, and are not subject to overall spending caps.

Congress is expected to get another such emergency request soon. The Pentagon says it needs $100 billion more to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through the end of September, adding to the $350 billion the Iraq war alone has so far cost the nation.

White House press secretary Tony Snow stopped short of saying that the administration was considering folding war costs into annual budget requests _ the next due to Congress on Feb. 5 _ as the Iraq Study Group recommended.

But, he said: "We have already been providing larger and larger set asides within the budget for doing that, and I think that you'll find in the State of the Union that we will move toward making expenditures in Iraq, and in the war on terror generally, including Afghanistan as transparent as possible."

In the Rose Garden after meeting with his Cabinet, Bush said his new budget "will restrain spending while setting priorities."

"It will address the most urgent needs of our nation," he said.

Faced with working with an opposition Congress for the first time of his presidency, Bush welcomed new members of Congress and said he's anxious to work with them on the nation's priorities during the remaining two years of his presidency.

"Congress has changed," Bush added. "Our obligations to the country haven't changed."

But in a newspaper opinion piece published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, the president also served notice to lawmakers:

"If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate," Bush wrote. "If a different approach is taken, the next two years can be fruitful ones for our nation. We can show the American people that Republicans and Democrats can come together to find ways to help make America a more secure, prosperous and hopeful society."