The Congressional Budget Office released new deficit projections this morning, and the AP's Andrew Taylor buys the GOP claim that the President's policies have eased the short-term deficit. CQ Today's Midday Update (free email service) doesn't buy the spin and instead notes the more important findings of the CBO report.

The cost of continuing the war in Iraq and Afghanistan at the current level would nearly double the projected federal budget deficit over the next 10 years, according to estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office on Monday.

The CBO lowered its projected budget deficit for fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30, to $331 billion — a $2 billion improvement from the White House’s estimates of a month ago.

Yet the CBO’s forecast of deficits through 2015 jumped by $1.1 trillion from its March projection, largely on the assumption that outlays for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would continue while the current surge in revenue would not.

While CBO’s fiscal 2005 deficit projection fell from its March estimates by $34 billion, its fiscal 2006 projection rose $16 billion to $314 billion to account for continued spending on the war and other supplemental appropriations. That is still well below the $341 billion deficit that OMB projects in fiscal 2006.

The next time a Republican huckster tries to sell you on the notion that the GOP is a fiscally conservative party, show them this story as mroe than ample proof of the spendthrift ways of the modern Republican Party.

Only one President in the last thirty years has balanced the federal budget -- William Jefferson Clinton, a Democrat. By cutting some spending and raising taxes, Clinton slashed the deficit and ushered in the best economy the nation has ever seen.

So while the GOP still tries to peddle the nostrum of trickle-down economics through excessive tax cuts for the extremely wealthy, only through a balanced set of fiscal policies -- a la the Clinton years -- can America truly prosper economically.