President George W. Bush will propose a $2.4 trillion budget today that will cut dozens of government programs, roll back business tax breaks and set an election-year goal of reducing a record $521 billion deficit by one-third in a year.
But even his fellow Republicans were sceptical that Mr Bush can deliver. The fiscal 2005 budget he will send to Congress does not include the tens of billions of dollars that will probably be needed in 2005 and beyond to keep troops in Iraq.
Moreover, it does not factor in the costly tax system overhaul that both Republicans and Democrats say will soon become politically imperative to protect the nation's middle class.
Homeland security and the military - the two most critical issues in Bush's re-election campaign - will be the biggest budgetary winners.
Defence contractors including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics stand to benefit as Mr Bush's $401.7 billion military budget sharply increases spending on missile defence and on modernising the Army.
The biggest losers will be environmental, agricultural and energy programmes. Facing the prospects of a revolt by fiscal conservatives, Bush will call for limiting growth in discretionary spending - outside of homeland security and defence - to just 0.5 per cent. As that is well below the rate of inflation, it will amount to a cut in domestic programs.
In a tacit acknowledgement that deficits are here to stay, Mr Bush will set the goal of cutting the shortfall in half within five years. There is no longer talk of eliminating it. His budget envisions bringing this year's record $521 billion shortfall down to $364 billion in fiscal 2005 and eventually to $237 billion in fiscal 2009.
Mr Bush has overseen a dramatic deterioration in the nation's fiscal picture since a record surplus was recorded in 2000, and his advisers hope to at least show some progress reducing the deficit - even if only on paper - before the November election.
But Democrats scoffed at Mr Bush's plan to stem the red ink while asking Congress to make permanent his tax cuts at a cost of nearly $2 trillion over the next 10 years.