US President George W. Bush sent Congress a US$2.4 trillion election-year budget yesterday featuring huge increases for defense and homeland security but also a record US$521 billion deficit.

　　To battle the soaring deficits, Bush proposed squeezing scores of government programs and sought outright spending cuts in seven of 15 Cabinet-level agencies. The Agriculture Department and the Environmental Protection Agency were targeted for the biggest reductions.

　　The president declared that his spending blueprint, which will set off months of heated debate in Congress, "advances our three highest priorities" winning the war on terror, strengthening homeland defenses and boosting the economic recovery.

　　"Our nation remains at war," Bush declared in his budget message. "This nation has committed itself to the long war against terror. And we will see that war to its inevitable conclusion: the destruction of the terrorists."

　　The president's plan for the 2005 budget year, which begins next October 1, proposes spending US$2.4 trillion for all government activities, up 3.5 percent from the current year. Revenues will total US$2.04 trillion, a sizable 13.2 percent increase that the administration forecasts will occur from growing tax receipts powered by a stronger economy.

　　The president projects the 2005 deficit will be US$364 trillion, down from a projected record high deficit in dollar terms of US$521 billion this year. He pledged to cut that in half over the next five years.

　　The president's budget states that stronger economic growth and reductions in general government spending will produce steady improvements in the deficit, which the administration projects will fall to US$237 billion in 2009.

　　However, Democrats immediately attacked the spending proposal for what they viewed as harmful reductions in various government programs and the president's insistence on making his 2001 and 2003 tax cuts permanent at a cost projected in the budget of more than US$900 billion over 10 years.

　　"This administration pledged that its tax cuts and policy choices would not turn record surpluses into record deficits, but this budget shows that's exactly what's happened," said Senate Democratic Leader Tom Daschle.

　　Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy called on Congress to reject Bush's spending plan, charging it was the "most antifamily, anti-worker, anti-healthcare, anti-education budget in modern times."

　　Bush would boost military spending by 7 percent in 2005, but that does not include the money needed to keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Officials said a supplemental request for these funds will be sent to Congress but not until after the November elections. Congress last year approved an US$87.5 billion wartime supplemental for the current budget year.