President Bush on Monday released a $3.1 trillion budget plan for fiscal 2009 that, if approved, would raise military spending to inflation-adjusted levels not seen since World War II.

The blueprint — President Bush’s last and most expensive to date — would also extend the tax cuts enacted in his first term. Increases for the military budget and big tax cuts have been hallmarks of Bush’s presidency.

The plan includes $11.4 billion to run the State Department. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wants to hire close to 1,100 more people, a big jump for an agency with about 8,000 Foreign Service Officers.

The budget would nearly freeze the total amount of discretionary spending on domestic programs and significantly cut the growth of Medicare.

NPR

This is unconscionable. This country is $9 trillion in debt and he goes and proposes the largest budget in American history and of course it isn’t close to being balanced. I see no reason why we need to increase military and defense spending by such an ungodly amount and produce a spending budget in excess of $3 trillion dollars. We need to close some of our bases around the world and bring those soldiers back to this country. We need to keep the cuts in discretionary spending, including the Medicare cuts in this budget as well as every other entitlement socialist program. We need to eliminate earmarks 100% and we need to start paying off this debt now!

And Bush will speak at CPAC this week? I thought that was a conservative conference.

Slumping revenues and the cost of an economic rescue package will combine to produce a huge jump in the deficit to $410 billion this year and $407 billion in 2009, the White House says, just shy of the record $413 billion set four years ago.

AP

February 7th-9th at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington. This will be the 6th consecutive CPAC I’ve attended, and the third time that SavetheGOP has had a place on Blog Row. Unfortunately, it looks like I’ll be alone in representing the blog this time around.

This year’s CPAC promises to be one of the best in a while. Following his famous snub of the conference last year, John McCain will apparently be in attendance. Even more surprising though, is that President Bush will speak to the attendees on Friday morning. This will be the first time a sitting American President has addressed CPAC since Ronald Reagan in 1988.

I will be very interested to see what type of reception both the President and Senator McCain receive from the attendees.

One final point. Following the outrage after her remarks last year, Ann Coulter will not be a featured speaker at this year’s CPAC for the first time I can remember. However, she will still be in attendance at a “Q&A” organized by YAF and a few other organizations that will not be part of the main program. I guess it’s a start.