Bush budget will be Portman's baby

One Bush administration official who will soon be going toe-to-toe with the new Democratic Congress is Cincinnati's own Rob Portman, the former 2nd District congressman who is now White House budget director.

On Feb. 5, the Bush White House will deliver a $2.8 trillion federal budget plan to Congress, a document drawn up in large part by Portman, who will be called on to help sell it to his former Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill.

Counting on continued growth in revenues, the Bush budget plan promises to elminate federal budget deficits by 2012 and do it while continuing to fight a global war on terrorism and with the Bush tax cuts in place.

"I think we can make the case that the tax cuts have worked and that this is a plan that can work,'' Portman said in Cincinnati Monday, in town to pick an award from the Center for Chemical Addition Treatment.

Portman said he couldn't share details of the budget plan and said there is still "a lot of number-crunching going on,'' but he said the administration is using "pretty conservative' revenue projections.

"We're not going to offer pie-in-the-sky revenue figures,'' Portman said. "It will be a realistic budget document."

Portman said the biggest fiscal challenge the government faces is "the long-term sustainability" of entitlement programs like Social Security.

Wednesday, on the Ohio State University campus in Columbus, Portman will be part of a panel discussion that is part of the Concord Coalition's "Fiscal Wake-up Tour,'' a nationwide series of events aimed at focusing attention on long-term fiscal problems.

Along with representatives of the conservative Heritage Foundation and the liberal Brookings Institution, Portman will appear with John Glenn, the former Democratic senator from Ohio.