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THURSDAY, JANUARY 24, 2002

Confirming projections by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the White House on Wednesday said the national deficit has returned and would stay until the end of President Bush's term.

White House Office of Management and Budget Director Mitch Daniels said the deficit would be $106 billion this year. He said a surplus, which the federal government had enjoyed for several years, would not again be seen until the end of the decade.

The revelation is a reversal of projections made by Daniels last year. The White House said would have a $231 billion surplus this year.

The CBO delivered its forecasts to two Senate committees yesterday. Democrats said the numbers made the government look like Enron but Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.), ranking member on the Budget Committee, said the change was due to the response to terrorism and the recession.

Bush yesterday said he would request $48 billion for defense spending when he releases his fiscal year 2003 budget on February 4. The Washington Post provides a review of how the federal agencies did in terms of the fiscal year 2002 budget, noting that Secretary of Interior Gale Norton was able to get funding, though not as much as some members of her party wished, to reduce the contruction and repair backlog at Indian schools.

Norton, in a press release, got into budget mode and touted the fact that Interior "pays for itself." She said her department in fiscal year 2001 took in $11.3 billion from various sources, including drilling on federal lands.

Her staff did not immediately have figures on how much tribes and individual Indian earned from their land.

Get the Story:
Interior Pays For Itself -- Including Nation's Conservation Initiatives (DOI 1/23)
Budget Reversal To Yield Deficit (The Washington Post 1/24)
A War-Scrambled Budget: How the Agencies Fared (The Washington Post 1/24)
President to Seek $48 Billion More for the Military (The New York Times 1/24)
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Relevant Links:
White House Office of Management and Budget - http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb
Congressional Budget Office - http://www.cbo.gov

Related Stories:
Federal surplus at $127B (10/30)
Budget analysis shows depleted surplus (8/28)
Tighter than expected budget forecasted (8/23)