Bush Budget Has a Long Reach
If enacted, the tax and spending plan would be an about-face on a scale of those by Reagan, LBJ.

Two months after the White House began rolling out its latest budget, the full dimensions of President Bush's new tax and spending plan are finally coming into view, and they are even more sweeping than originally thought.

By linking expenditures forced on the nation by the 2001 terrorist attacks with a blizzard of other measures, Bush has produced a proposal that, if enacted, would result in a governmental about-face as far-reaching as those of Ronald Reagan or Lyndon B. Johnson.

Coupled with his already-approved 2001 cuts, the president's new tax package would make Bush the biggest tax cutter in at least two decades and possibly half a century. He would top even Reagan.

His proposed defense buildup would be bigger in real terms than Johnson's Vietnam buildup, and that's not counting the cost of a war with Iraq and its aftermath.

His plan to revamp Medicaid and other programs Washington runs jointly with the states would be, in the words of a former Nixon administration budget official, "one of the biggest pullbacks in federal responsibility we've ever seen."
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Massive deficits projected for Bush budget
Figures exclude possible war with Iraq

President Bush's proposed new round of tax cuts and the rest of his budget would produce a string of federal deficits over the coming decade totaling $1.82 trillion, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected on Friday.
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Jobs Plunge 308,000 Amid War Worries

The U.S. economy last month suffered its worst jobs drop since the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, as worries about a war with Iraq led to widespread caution about hiring.
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