WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2003
NEWS IN BRIEF
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN - 15
ECONOMICS
White House raises deficit; blames economy, terrorism
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The Bush administration dramatically raised its budget deficit projections yesterday to $455 billion for this year and $475 billion for next, record levels fed by the limp economy, tax cuts and the battle against terrorism.
The totals would easily surpass the $290 billion shortfall of 1992 that has been the red ink high water mark until now.
They also mark a deterioration by more than 50 percent since February.
The shortfalls would drop to $213 billion in 2007, before edging back up to $226 billion the following year underscoring that major budget challenges will loom just as the huge baby boom generation begins to retire and relies ever more on federal benefits like Social Security.
The dreary numbers set Republicans and Democrats at each other's political throats over an issue the public has largely ignored in recent years.
White House officials and GOP lawmakers said congressional spending must be controlled and economic growth policies like tax cuts should be continued.
They said President Bush has had other, more pressing concerns.
"Restoring a balanced budget is an important priority for this administration." White House budget director
Joshua Bolten told reporters. "But a balanced budget is not a higher priority than winning the global war on terror, protecting the American homeland, or restoring economic growth and job creation."
"Deficits do matter," said House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle, R-Iowa. "Spending-driven deficits matter even more."
Democrats in Congress and on the campaign trail linked the unprecedented red ink to what they call Bush's mismanagement of the economy.
They also said the numbers masked a budget problem far worse than advertised, noting that the White House excluded the costs of a U.S. role in Iraq beyond this year.
In addition, the administration only projected five years into the future, missing the massive long-range costs of Bush's plan to make recent tax cuts permanent, and of the retirement of the 75-million strong baby boom generation later this decade.
"Total fiction," Sen. Kent Conrad of North Dakota, top Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, said of the new Bush numbers.
To justify its prediction of shrinking deficits beginning in 2005, the White House envisions robust economic growth resuming this summer, producing more jobs and corporate profits and more federal revenue.
judge because of how Waco authorities are handling the case, his attorney said Wednesday.
Carlton Dotson has been questioned once by a Waco detective who went to Virginia Beach, Va., after Dennehy's sport utility vehicle was found in a mall parking lot two weeks ago. Dotson had already returned to his Hurlock, Md., home for the summer.
An unidentified informant told Delaware authorities that Dotson told a cousin he shot Dennehy in the head as the two argued while shooting guns near Waco, according to court documents. Dennehy, a 6-foot-10, 230-pound center, has not been heard from since mid-June.
Waco police have called Dotson a "person of interest." No charges have been filed in the case.
Man gets 18-to-life sentence in New York sex slave case
SYRACUSE, N.Y. (AP) — A judge sentenced a retired handyman to 18 years to life in prison yesterday, calling the defendant "a sick coward" and "an evil man" for keeping five women as sex slaves in a concrete bunker.
John Jamelske, 68, pleaded guilty last month to kidnapping five women and girls and holding them from 1988 to 2003 at his home in DeWitt, a Syracuse suburb.
None of the victims appeared in court for Jamelske's sentencing, but prosecutors read excerpts from statements each woman submitted to the court.
A 16-year-old victim wrote that she almost gave up hope as she was raped daily.
"Please lock him up and never allow
him to perpetrate on any young, innocent girls again," she said. "He is an old, sick man, and he is never going to change. I hope you die in the cold, cement cell, like you wanted us to do."
North Korea pushes forward with nuclear weapons program
WASHINGTON (AP] — The Bush administration said yesterday it would try to use diplomacy to deal with North Korea's claim that it has produced enough plutonium for about a half-dozen nuclear bombs.
U. S. officials said they were not sure whether North Korean representatives were bluffing or telling the truth when they claimed to have finished extracting plutonium from 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods.
"When they told us they had nuclear weapons, they meant it," Lawrence Di Rita, a top aide to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, told reporters yesterday. "I'm not in a position to characterize the intelligence assessment of what the North Koreans are telling us, but certainly what they've told us in the past has been worth paying attention to."
Gathering the plutonium from those fuel rods would give North Korea enough of the element to produce several more nuclear weapons to add to the one or two nuclear bombs U.S. officials contend the communist-led government already has.
WORLD
Troops plan on occupying Iraq until legit government formed
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) — For the first time, the U.S. administrator, L. Paul Bremer, linked the U.S. occupation in Iraq to the political process, saying yesterday that American forces would remain in the country until Iraqis agree on a new constitution and set up a democratic government.
American soldiers grumbled when told they would have to stay longer in a country where U.S. forces say they are coming under an average of 12 attacks each day.
"I'm tired of going to bed wondering if I'm going to wake up in the morning," said Spc. David Myers Jr.of the 3rd Infantry Division's 3rd Battalion,7th Infantry Regiment in Habaniyah, west of Baghdad.
The new Governing Council, meanwhile, decided to set up special courts to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime who are accused of involvement in mass executions, torture and other human rights violations.
Bush: Any troop deployment to Liberia limited in duration
WASHINGTON (AP] — U.N. Secretary- General Kofi Annan made his strongest pitch yet to President Bush for American peacekeeping troops in Liberia, but Bush is deferring his decision until he gathers more information.
Bush said Monday that any deployment of American troops to Liberia would be limited in size and duration and would depend on Liberian President Charles Taylor stepping down and leaving the country.
Bush gave no indication he was close to a decision, and aides said they didn't expect one this week. He offered no hint of whether any U.S. contingent would comprise military advisers, humanitarian experts or soldiers.
Prince William's party crasher ducks charges from authorities
LONDON (AP) — A comedian who dressed up as Osama bin Laden and crashed Prince William's 21st birthday party won't face any charges, London's Metropolitan Police said Monday.
Self-styled "comedy terrorist" Aaron Barschak, 37, got into the June 21 event at Windsor Castle by scaling a steep embankment, climbing a tree, then jumping on to a wall and clambering to a terrace. Once inside, he persuaded police officers that he had legitimate business at the party.
The stunt was a major breach of royal security, and has led to an official investigation.
U.S., Turkey offer regrets of mistaken troop capture
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkey released a statement yesterday saying it and the United States regretted the capture of 11 Turkish special forces soldiers in northern Iraq in early July. A U.S. official said Washington still had not approved the document.
A U.S.-Turkish committee had been set up last week to investigate the surprise July 4 raid, when U.S. troops detained the Turkish soldiers in the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah.
The Turks offered the Americans tea but the U.S. soldiers took the Turks prisoners, handcuffed them, hooded them and flew them to Baghdad for interrogation. They were released more than two days later.
The capture was the latest setback to Turkish-U.S. relations, already strained since March, when Turkey rejected a U.S. request to host 60,000 U.S. troops for the war in Iraq.
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