The broad outlines of the Democrats' FY 2008 Budget Resolution strategy are beginning to emerge. This much is now clear, per comments this week by House and Senate Budget Committee chairs Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) and Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND):

• the BR will set total discretionary spending above the $929.8 billion cap proposed by President Bush
• it will provide for a balanced buget by FY 2012, by increasing revenues "without any tax rate increases"; instead, it will "broaden the base and keep rates low"

In addition, unlike the Bush budget, the BR won't cut the COPS program 94 percent, firefighter grants, education, or low-income heating assistance. Nor will the blueprint call for cuts in Medicare or Medicaid. At the same time, says Conrad ($), to his credit:

[Democrats] are not going to cut defense... We are going to more accurately fund the war because the president says in 2009 it ends. That's not what CBO says. We're not using funny money numbers here. We're going to use real numbers.

The key variable in the strategy is on the revenue side. Conrad promised a tax overhaul package that would go after overseas tax shelters, deal with the alternative minimum tax and shrink the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid -- policies which would almost certainly require significant new revenues, in the aggregate. Another major unknown is which of the Bush tax cuts will be assumed to expire under the plan.

Many observers eagerly await the policy details outlining the path to the promised land of a balanced budget by 2012, given the raised cap and commitments cited above. Among them, a certain quotable, notable House Ways and Means chair, Charles Rangel (D-NY), whose reaction to Conrad's comments about balancing the budget without raising tax rates was: "I wish he would tell me how."

Film at 11.

This week, the House and Senate authorizing committees start drafting their "Views and Estimates" letters, conveying their positions on the President's FY 2008 budget provisions for the programs that fall under their jurisdiction. The committees must submit their letters to their respective budget committees no later than six weeks after the president's budget release, this year, March 19. The budget committees may, however, request a given authorizing committee to submit its letter by an earlier date.

The letters offer general direction and advice to the budget committees as they draft their Budget Resolutions. A committee letter may be accompanied by a divergent or supporting minority report. Generally, the committee review and approve their Views and Estimates letters in closed sessions.

In fact, the House Small Business and Veterans' Affairs committees will consider their letters in open meetings, starting tomorrow.

Over the course of the five-week congressional "work period," a major fiscal focus will be the FY 2008 budget resolution. Below is the current congressional timetable for the budget resolution -- a roadmap Congress uses to plan out the budget for the year setting out changes on entitlement programs and taxes.

Congress was unable to approve an FY 2007 budget resolution at all, but with both parties in closer agreement on budget discipline, odds may be better now for successful completion of such a resolution this year. But House and Senate leaders' current schedule projections regarding an FY 2008 budget resolution are as follows:

• Per House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD): House Budget Committee to pass a resolution the week of March 12
• House floor consideration of the resolution the week of March 19
• Senate Budget Committee chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) has set a of goal of producing a draft resolution by the end of March
• The Budget Control Act statutory deadline for adoption of a budget resolution by Congress: April 15 (though subsequent adoption is possible)

(NB: House can begin to consider appropriations bills May 15, even if a budget resolution is not adopted)

We'll keep you posted regarding legislative developments on the budget resolution as they occur.

OMB Watch is pleased to annouce we have just released a new version of FedSpending.org with updated data, new features, and improved navigation. The new site is now live - see it yourself at www.fedspending.org.

OMB Watch issued a press release that describes the updates and improvments made to the site, and you can learn and see more about FedSpending v2.0 in the About This Site section, or by exploring the site yourself.

We welcome your feedback, comments, and questions about the new website, so please go to the Contact section of FedSpending.org and send us your thoughts.

By a 71-26 vote yesterday, the Senate moved closer to approving the FY 2007 CR passed by the House last week (covered here), with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-TN) and 22 other GOP members joining all but one Democrat to close debate and move to a final vote, which could come later today.

In the end, fear of a government shutdown prompted the action. The rapidly-approaching deadline for the CR -- which expires tomorrow -- quieted many Senators who sought to offer amendments on a range of issues, most notably BRAC funding. To help move the CR along, Majority Leader Harry Reid said BRAC issues will be taken up when President Bush submits his expected $100 billion war supplemental in the coming weeks.

Avoiding a government shutdown by sloughing off BRAC and other items onto the supplemental is not exactly an act of fiscal courage: as an "emergency" measure, the war supplemental will not be subject to the same budgetary constraints as regular appropriations.

The President's FY 2008 budget submission to Congress was only hours old yesterday when senior Republicans in both the Senate and House stopped just short of declaring it still-born:

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Judd Gregg (R-NH):

Unfortunately, I don't think it has got a whole lot of legs... The White House is afraid of taxes and the Democrats are afraid of controlling spending.

Rep. Michael Castle (R-DE):

I am concerned that this budget request may fall short in balancing non-war Defense Department funding with the need for critical domestic spending priorities. [And h]onest accounting must preclude politically motivated gimmicks... We would be remiss if we didn't take into account ... a very difficult alternative minimum tax fix and the impact that will have on the overall goal [of balancing the budget].

Not to suggest that this means Bush's budget is D.O.A., but the public expression of this degree of skepticism by GOP lawmakers on the day of the budget's release does not bode well for its prospects in Congress over the coming months.

The GOP may not be eager to disregard the $930 billion discretionary spending cap Bush seeks to impose, but some key spending cuts (e.g., to Head Start) will at least mean some spending priority trade-offs under the cap.

On the entitlement side, as House Ways and Means Committee chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) points out, "It is disingenuous for the president to suggest cuts [of $101 billion over five years] to Medicare and Medicaid that he knows the Congress will not support... It's not going to happen."

OMB Watch has released a preliminary analysis of the President's FY 08 Budget request.

President's Budget Full of Cheap Rhetoric; Wrong Priorities
President Favors Tax Cuts for the Wealthy over Domestic Needs

Check back here for additional analyses and commentary on the budget as the week progresses.

This afternoon, CNN is reporting that, next Monday, the Bush administration will ask for:

• supplemental funding of $100 billion for military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan (bringing total war appropriations for 2007 to about $170 billion)

  as well as

• $145 billion, budgeted for FY2008 and broken down into detailed form (but subject to a supplemental of its own)

according to National Security Adviser Stephen J. Hadley.

Yes, the President plans to submit this record-setting supplemental war funding request on the very same day that he submits his budget for FY2008 (almost as if no one will notice the supplemental that way). But at least he has finally begun to acceede to long-standing demands for proper budget accounting of war financing.

Based on the president's recent announcement of his plan to deploy an additional 21,000 troops to Iraq, CBO has released a report detailing the projected costs of such an escalation. CBO Director, Peter Orszag, predicts that the president's plan to increase troop levels could cost as much as $27 billion.

So far, the president has funded the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan through emergency, or supplemental, spending reqeusts to congress. Those requests have so far amounted to $503 billion. Since 2001, more than half of a trillion dollars has been allocated for war funding - the vast, vast majority of which has not been subject to normal budgetary procedures. Given that it is certain American forces will be deployed abroad for the next year (and probably the year after that), and given that military operations expenditures now have a five-history, budgeters can now make reasonable estimates of impending war expenditures.

There absolutely is no reason that when the president submits his budget to congress on Monday that it should not include costs for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. His refusal to to subject war funding to the normal budget process will not only surely stymie his efforts to balance the budget by 2012, but it will also hinder congress's ability to construct a meaningful budget that will help guide them in preparing for the long term fiscal challenges that begin in a few short years when the Baby Boomers begin retiring en masse. The president owes it to the nation to fully account for all fiscal events that he believes will come to pass.

David Broder's column in yesterday's Post, Deficit Day Of Reckoning? dutifully recounts the Democratic congressional leadership's guidelines for fiscal responsibility, sent to President Bush in a Jan. 26 letter.

The letters urges that Bush's FY 2008 budget, due next Monday, Feb. 5:

• account realistically for projected federal costs
• realistically project short- and long-term deficits
• provide detail throughout the entire budget period so that the choices required to meet the budget goals are clear
• be based on fiscal discipline that is sustained over the long term

Broder cites two senior administration officials who give assurances that Bush's budget

... will become a starting point for serious negotiation -- not a partisan football or simple laughingstock. [They] pledged to make visible the costs of the war and to be specific about the trade-offs needed to maintain budget discipline, [using] the economic assumptions underlying the president's budget are modest -- if anything, an underestimate of the revenue likely to be produced by a growing economy.

All very well and good, but even making good on all these assurances will not be enough to ensure that the administration's budget is taken seriously. If the budget calls for a laughable level of domestic discretionary program spending cuts, you will hear that familiar phrase.... D.O.A.