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American Morning

President Bush Will Make His Budget Public Today

Aired February 04, 2002 - 07:33   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JACK CAFFERTY, CNN ANCHOR: Speaking of money, "A billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money." That's a quote from the late Senator Everett Dirksen. He was talking about the money that Congress spends.

President Bush will make his budget public today. Consider the size of the defense budget that he would like to have. Columnist Tom Freidman of "The New York Times" writes -- quote -- "If President Bush gets the defense budget increase he asks for in his State of the Union address, U.S. defense spending will equal the defense budgets for the next 15 highest countries -- combined."

Now, for the latest on the president's budget, defense and other things, let's go to Washington and CNN's Major Garrett -- good morning -- happy Monday.

MAJOR GARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Happy Monday, Jack. You know, one of the hardest things on budget day here in Washington is trying to put this number in context. This is an astronomical number, $2 trillion, Jack? I mean, you can't figure that out. You can't imagine that. I can't imagine $2 trillion, but let's look at just one part of that Bush budget; $379 billion for defense.

Now, let's compare it to some other well known countries, U.S. allies around the world. The U.K. spends about $35 billion a year on defense, France about 27, Germany about 23, Russia is in there at 29. All 19 NATO countries spend about $140 billion. The U.S. the clear Super Bowl winner when it comes to defense spending, and this year the president is looking for an increase of about $48 billion over last year's request. Why? To wage the war on terrorism, not just to deal with al Qaeda and Taliban, but senior administration officials also say to make sure the U.S. defense budget is prepared for the "axis of evil," Iran, North Korea and Iraq and whatever may be lying ahead as far as those three nations are concerned -- Jack.

CAFFERTY: Major, despite the fact that the federal government is now running deficits, can anybody get away with voting against an increase in defense spending, given the situation this country is in right now?

GARRETT: Virtually no one. I mean, everyone here in Washington expects that the president will get almost everything he has asked for, not only on defense, but Homeland Security. But an interesting thing happened on Friday, Jack, when the president went to the Greenbrier Resort and sat down with House and Senate Republicans. He got an earful from some Republicans saying we don't want to vote for anything that's a deficit budget this year, which means we would like you to withdraw your economic stimulus plan, because we don't want deficits. We want more debt reduction, and if you have that stimulus plan with all of those tax cuts and other spending, we're not going to get it. So yank that so we can have low deficits, maybe zero deficits, plus all of this defense and Homeland Security spending.

So many hawkish Republicans would rather take the defense spending, would rather take the Homeland Security spending and for now forget the tax cuts, at least the extra ones the president wants to stimulate the economy -- Jack.

CAFFERTY: It sounds like they are setting up a little horse trading.

GARRETT: Exactly. A very familiar game here in town.

CAFFERTY: Yes, that's how they get almost everything done down there, that which they do manage to get one -- Major, thanks. Good to have you with us -- Major Garrett at the White House.

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