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Rising budget deficit may add to Republican woes
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While avoiding direct criticism of Bush's policies, Republican presidential candidate John McCain has distanced himself from Bush's approach on the budget. The Arizona senator voted against Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, although he now says he would support extending them. McCain has also made cutting wasteful government spending a mantra of his campaign.
Bush, too, has taken up the cause of spending restraint lately. In his State of the Union address on Monday, he unveiled a new effort to crack down on special-project spending items that lawmakers add to budget bills.
Democrats have countered that Bush did little to curb such special-project spending when Republicans held control of Congress. Democrats also point to controls they've already put in place to make those spending measures more transparent.
In addition to the slower growth, the $150 billion price tag for the stimulus package of tax rebates and other measures will add to this year's budget deficit.
Bush's funding request for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for 2008 totals $193 billion and is another source of upward pressure on the deficit.
While most of Bush's Republican allies in Congress have supported the stimulus package that the administration hammered out with leaders in the House of Representatives, some have expressed wariness about its effect on the deficit.
Sen. Judd Gregg, the New Hampshire conservative and senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said the stimulus legislation would "aggravate" the deficit and he voiced doubts about its effectiveness.
Gregg acknowledged a near-term worsening in the budget picture was likely, though he said the bigger fiscal worry was the future cost of entitlement spending.
"Any adjustment in the deficit is going to be a reflection of the economic activity and the slowdown that we're probably heading into," Gregg said. "Of course if we're heading into something more severe than a slowdown we're going to see a very significant adjustment."
(Editing by David Wiessler)
