Huge Decline Seen in Budget Surplus Over Next Decade
"We're a world away from where we were at this time last year," said Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina, the senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "I'm not sure how you solve this equation, arithmetically or politically."

The new figures, developed separately by the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee and the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee, are an effort to predict official figures to be released by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office this month and the White House's Office of Management and Budget next month.

The numbers developed by the two staffs are very similar. They provide a clear sense of the scale of the reversal in the nation's fiscal fortunes in the wake of the economic downturn, the Sept. 11 attacks and the $1.35 trillion tax cut President Bush pushed through last year over opposition from most Democrats.

With the money drying up and Democrats and Republicans facing painful choices between cutting the budget and abandoning any pretense of fiscal responsibility, the political and economic considerations are complex.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/06/politics/06BUDG.html