Concocting an "austere" $2.6 trillion budget.(federal budget)

ITEM: The New York Times for February. 8 reported on President Bush's proposed budget: "By any measure, the new budget is austere. It calls for deep cuts next year in almost every category of domestic spending outside the mandatory entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, which are based on laws adopted in previous years."

ITEM: NBC reporter Norah O'Donnell waxed anxious on the Today show for February 7, saying: "The President is proposing today the tightest budget of his presidency, and it's gonna slash spending ... across a wide swath of government."

CORRECTION: It doesn't take much to be the "tightest" Bush budget--since spending during the Bush years has grown at twice the rate it did under the spendthrift President Clinton. Bush's new budget for 2006 is more than a third larger than 2001 spending, when Bush became president. Spending and deficits have been exploding. As the Washington Post said: "The government spent $2.3 trillion and ran a $412 billion deficit in 2004, compared to $1.8 trillion it spent and the $86 billion surplus it ran in the final full year of the Clinton administration."

The White House, meanwhile, calls its proposed budget for 2006 its "leanest budget yet." This budget, a mind-blowing $2.6 trillion, would pile a 3.6 percent increase in spending on top of the astonishing 33 percent increase during Mr. Bush's first term--and that's assuming the incredible, that Congress will accept the relatively small reductions in the so-called domestic discretionary programs (which represent only 17 percent of the whole budget).

The president's budget would seriously cut or terminate 150 programs. Yet, the budget is so lard-laden that even with these cuts total spending will continue to increase. Moreover, no one knowledgeable about Capitol Hill expects even this penny-ante snipping to occur. It's part of Washington's predictable ritual. The president proposes a few cuts--which riles up liberals, special-interest groups, and the mass media, which exaggerate the potential nicks or slower growth rates. Eventually, the Congress disposes of most of the supposedly draconian cuts.

Last year, for example, President Bush said he wanted to do away with or make major cuts to 65 programs, which would save almost $5 billion. However, as the New York Times noted, "Congress eliminated fewer than a half dozen of them, for a total saving of less than $200 million." Many of these very programs are back again on the supposed cut list, and congressional leaders have already told the White House not to expect to see more than two dozen of the 150 cuts enacted--and that's probably too optimistic.

Even tiny reductions are too much for the leftist media. On CBS, for instance, Lee Cowan (as transcribed by the Media Research Center) bemoaned how "the proposed cuts hit the heartland ...