As the AP's economics reporter Martin Crutsinger reports, the International Monetary Fund isn't very impressed by President Bush's pledge to half the deficit by 2009 (leaving aside whether he can even follow through with the pledge).

While billions of federal dollars are being spent to recover from Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration wants the world to know that it will be able to keep its pledge to cut the federal budget deficit in half by the time the president leaves office.

However, the International Monetary Fund is deriding that goal as "relatively unambitious" and suggesting that a better target would be to totally eliminate the deficit by 2010 with the help of tax increases.

The policy recommendation from the IMF staff was released Wednesday as part of the lending institutions' latest "World Economic Outlook." The IMF warned that various global imbalances, including huge budget and trade deficits in the United States, posed a significant risk to the world economy.

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The IMF criticized the Bush administration's goal of cutting the budget deficit in half by 2009 for not going far enough and also for relying too much on what would be unprecedented cuts in government spending that left the entire program "subject to considerable risk."

As an alternative, the IMF recommended that the United States consider raising taxes through such methods as eliminating some current tax deductions, creating a national consumption tax or a new energy tax, all ideas that run counter to President Bush's tax-cutting goals.

Every cent borrowed today will cost more tomorrow, not just for our generation, but our children's generation and their children's generation. If we want America to succeed and thrive through the 21st century, we must stop saddling ourselves with debt -- and like the IMF said, the time is now.