In August, the Congressional Budget Office projected that the deficit would reach $480 billion in 2004 but decline thereafter and become a surplus by 2012. Over the ten-year period, CBO projected a net of $1.4 trillion in deficits.

In projecting deficits, CBO follows mechanical "baseline" rules that do not allow it to account for the costs of any prospective tax or entitlement legislation, no matter how likely the enactment of such legislation may be. This results in unrealistic, and overly optimistic, projections. For this and other reasons, CBO itself explicitly warns that its baseline projections should not be viewed as a prediction of policy outcomes. Nor should the CBO estimates be viewed as a projection of the budget path that we are currently following under realistic rather than mechanical assumptions.

A more plausible projection of current policy, which our three organizations have jointly prepared, shows deficits totaling $5.0 trillion over the ten-year period. Under this projection, deficits never fall below $420 billion, reach $610 billion ¿ or 3.4 percent of Gross Domestic Product ¿ by 2013, boost the publicly held debt to 51 percent of GDP by 2013, and cause federal interest payments to hit $470 billion, or 15 percent of revenues, in that year.

Health Care: 44 million Americans, 15 percent of population, including 8.5 million children, don't have health insurance.

Jobs & Economic Recovery: Two million fewer jobs than when Bush took office. Tax cuts that were supposed to create 300,000 new jobs a month never reached one-third of that goal. In December 2003, only 1,000 new jobs were created. New jobs pay less than those lost. Last year, household debt increased at highest rate in 15 years.

Funding Education: No Child Left Behind law $7 billion short. Public schools laying off teachers, closing schools and shortening academic year.

Environment: Landmark environmental laws weakened. Allowable levels of mercury from power plants tripled. Superfund clean-up costs shifted from polluters to public. Clean Air Act rules for dirtiest power plants relaxed.

State & Federal Spending: States face largest budget crises in decades. Federal deficit has hit a new high. $166 billion spent on Iraq as U.S. non-defense domestic spending plummeted. IMF warns that U.S. debt and trade imbalance threaten global economic stability.

War on Terror: No WMD found. No link between Iraq and Al Qaeda found. Osama bin Laden still at large. Iraq reconstruction marred by terrorism, corporate profiteering and failure to restore basic services.

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