An eye-opening article in today's Washington Post says that internal White House documents indicate that meeting the president's goal of cutting the deficit in half will involve a significant amount of cutting to domestic programs -- even to those supposedly "favored" by President Bush.

This years budget has several of these programs -- such as veterans health care and the National Institutes of Health -- slated for funding increases, however the stark reality is that these programs would actually be cut by the end of the decade. While the budget released by Bush to Congress only shows funding requests for domestic discretionary spending through 2007, a separate White House printout shows hidden cuts in appropriations in many education, health, and service programs that are slated to see slight increases this year. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has prepared an analysis of these hidden cuts, which can be found here. The White House document, detailing their five-year cutting plan for every non-defense discretionary program (again, this is not in the budget) can be seen here.

Washington Post: Years of Deep Cuts Needed to Meet Goal on Deficit, Data Show

President Bush's FY 2007 budget released on Monday allocated $441.3 billion for interest payments on the debt during fiscal year 2007. That's a huge 39 percent increase over the $318 billion spent four years ago and a 25 percent increase from the $352 billion spent last year. The president's allocation is a 11 percent increase over last year's request.

Interest payments on the debt will keep rising, and at an ever increasing rate, if the Bush administration keeps government running in the red. As recent estimates, and the president's own budget calculations show, continuation of current administration policies will do just that - particularly making Bush's first term tax cuts permanent.

Congress is already set to pass the forth increase to the debt limit in the last five years before mid-March - an exercise almost all Democrats and Republicans agree loathe. The new debt ceiling will be approximately $9 trillion.

This is simply unsustainable over the long run. When is this administration going to wake up and realize its policies have pushed the country into debt up to its eyeballs?