WASHINGTON - George W. Bush wants a new missile-defense system, prescription drug coverage, and the partial privatization of Social Security. The price tag? Bush won't say, although it is clearly in the hundreds of billions of dollars. And his campaign sees no reason to come up with estimates until he is elected president.
Al Gore wants to expand health coverage, eliminate the national debt, while shoring up and expanding Social Security. How will he pay for it? He makes a $130 billion assumption that the next Congress would adopt his plan to increase cigarette taxes and cut ''corporate loopholes.''
This is the beginning of the budget brinksmanship that has become a backdrop of Campaign 2000. Over 10 years, there is much to differentiate between budget proposals: at least $1 trillion - yes, trillion.
There may be no more important difference between the candidates. Their competing plans will directly affect everything from drug coverage to retirement money to the stock market.
In recent weeks, each candidate has blasted the other about the budget, claiming the opponent's campaign promises would devour the surplus and put the country back into deficit spending. But an examination of promises being made by Bush and Gore seems to show that both are relying on questionable assumptions. And both have failed to put a price on major proposals.
Like players in a monumental game of Monopoly, Bush and Gore have passed ''Go'' as the all-but-certain nominees of their parties, and they must decide how they would spend or allocate the huge federal surplus that is projected over the next decade. There is no precedent for such a generous starting point for a US presidential candidate.
Eight months before the next president takes office, Bush and Gore have plans to spend nearly all the surplus, and perhaps much more. And it is far from clear whether the candidates are allocating enough money to pay off the national debt and save Social Security, as both say they want to do.
The candidates have been notably vague about cutting programs, normally a top topic in a presidential campaign. Bush, for example, has declined for months to release a list of programs he would eliminate, although aides said the governor still intends to follow through on his promise to end what Bush considers wasteful spending.
In a war of policy papers and press releases, the Gore campaign says Bush would have to cut spending by 40 percent to pay for his proposals. The Bush campaign responds that Gore has proposed more than twice as much spending as he has acknowledged.
So who's right? That depends on whose budget assumptions are to be believed.
Two forecasters at Standard & Poor's DRI said the budget plans of both Bush and Gore should be viewed with skepticism. The analysts, Cynthia Latta and Ezra Greenberg, said in a joint interview that Gore's economic assumptions are too pessimistic, but also said Bush's promise of huge tax cuts is too optimistic.
''They are both talking in excesses in order to make their political points,'' Latta said.
Greenberg said: ''In the end, they will end up doing things that are much more similar than they are now professing.'' Greenberg said, for example, that Bush probably would get through Congress only about half of the tax cuts he wants.
Some analysts say it is hard to know whom to believe. Few if any analysts believed in the 1996 campaign that the US budget deficit would vanish, and an enormous surplus would result, yet that is what happened. So any economic prediction made during this campaign may be justifiably suspect.
Bush is the candidate with the rosier scenario in this campaign. He predicts a $1.8 trillion surplus over the next 10 years, not counting Social Security funds. He says that would leave enough money for his tax cut and for his plan to allow younger workers to put part of their Social Security payments into private investment accounts.
Gore, despite having been in office during a period of extraordinary economic growth, has a less sanguine view of the future. He says slower economic growth will result in a much smaller surplus, $746 billion over 10 years. But he pads that surplus with $130 billion in revenues from a new 25-cent-a-pack cigarette tax and the elimination of mostly unspecified corporate loopholes. This may be a questionable addition, given a lack of congressional inclination for such measures.
Moreover, Gore does not count his own initiatives for education and military pay. These measures would cost $250 billion. Gore aides explained the omission by saying the money has been accounted for in the last Clinton budget, in what is known as the ''budget baseline.'' Bush aides, however, said Gore is using a gimmick to make his budget proposals look smaller.
Both campaigns agree that Bush and Gore are at least $1 trillion apart on how much extra money will be available to spend in the coming decade.
''The Bush campaign just invented $1 trillion because they needed it,'' said a Gore adviser, Elaine Kamarck. She said Bush has adopted a higher growth estimate to make his budget plan appear in balance.
Bush aides, however, said they are being cautious and cannot understand why Gore thinks growth will be so slow.
''The Gore plan is essentially a status-quo, do-nothing kind of plan: continue to sock away the surpluses and pay down the debt, take no chances,'' said Bruce Bartlett, a senior fellow at the conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, which favors the Bush program.
Even some moderate Democrats say Gore is being too cautious. Some leaders of the moderate Democratic Leadership Council, such as Senator John Breaux of Louisiana, have expressed dismay that Bush has been quicker to endorse their ideas on Social Security and Medicare than Gore.
Both candidates want tax cuts, but the similarity stops there. Bush plans tax cuts totaling $1.3 trillion over 10 years, including a reduction of the top income tax rate from 39.6 percent to 33 percent, cuts in tax rates for middle- and lower- income taxpayers, and elimination of the federal estate tax.
Gore says Bush's tax plan would in fact cost $2.3 trillion, thus busting the budget; Bush says Gore's critique is based on inaccurate forecasts.
Gore's tax-cut plan would be much smaller, $250 billion over 10 years, with most of it benefiting lower- and middle-income people, according to his campaign.
But aside from Bush's tax cut, the governor has remained vague about the cost of some of his most expensive proposals, such as his missile-defense system or his Social Security plan. Aides said Bush made that decision after watching Gore unleash a torrent of criticism against Bill Bradley's health-care proposal in the Democratic primary.
Gore says Bush's Social Security plan would cost $1 trillion more in transition costs than Bush has suggested. The Congressional Budget Office says that the missile-defense system proposed by the Pentagon would cost $60 billion, and that Bush's still-unspecified version may cost much more.
A Bush economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, asked how Bush could claim to be within the budget without including Social Security and missile defense, responded: ''We have internal estimates for what they are. We are comfortable with them.''
Lindsey refused to make those estimates public.
Bush is hardly alone in refusing to say how much some of his major proposals would cost. During the primary season, Gore indicated that he wanted to provide universal health care coverage, like Bradley, but that he didn't commit to any time frame. Instead, Gore says, he wants to achieve his initial goal of providing all children with health insurance.
Gore goes much further than Bush in outlining other health care programs and their costs. For example, Gore proposes spending $432 billion on Medicare, including $300 billion to extend the solvency of the Medicare Trust Fund until at least 2027.
Separately, Gore wants to spend $98 billion to increase health care coverage, mainly for children. Bush has not announced the details of his health care proposal, making it impossible to estimate costs.
While Gore blasts Bush's Social Security proposal as a ''risky scheme,'' his plan has received little scrutiny.
First, the vice president wants to spend an extra $100 billion to expand Social Security benefits for certain women, especially widows.
Second, and more significantly, Gore wants to use the budget surplus to pay off the debt. But Gore does not mean using the regular budget surplus, as some observers have assumed. Instead, Gore wants to use 95 percent of the Social Security surplus to pay off the $3.5 trillion national debt by 2013.
It is a complicated plan that essentially would be a massive fund swap: Use the Social Security surplus to pay off the national debt, and then, once the debt is paid off, use the money normally set aside to pay off the debt to bolster Social Security.
Bush has not been critical of this maneuver, apparently because he is considering a similar, though much smaller, plan.
Bush has not pledged to eliminate the national debt, and an aide said no one in the campaign could say how much of the debt would be reduced.
