With the president's recent budget release, one that sees a decline in the rate of past increases in discretionary spending (doesn't that sound like an oxymoron!), the debate over an ever-increasing budget deficit is far from over.

Last week's failed attempt to cut the federal highway bill in the Senate, likely to be vetoed by the president, is part of the ongoing debate.

What is most troubling is the flip-flop by some members of the GOP who don't think that skyrocketing deficits are an issue.

They are just plain wrong.

Much of the debate over federal spending was solidified last month when the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released 10-year projections that see the federal budget deficits totaling some $2.4 trillion by 2013.

The CBO also projects that this year's deficit, $477 billion, will top last year's all-time record of $375 billion!

This has more than a few Republicans leaders worried - maybe not so much about the numbers involved, but because it gives a tool to their opponents, minority congressional Democrats, who want to take back control of Congress.

Voters will see other Republicans in interesting modes of contortion as they start to defend the indefensible. Some will suggest that the recession, war on terrorism and Iraq are the cause, reversing what was four years of surpluses at the turn of the millennium.

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., likens some of his fellow members of Congress to drunken sailors on shore leave.

Expect those who want to spend more to launch an all-out media blitz attacking the worriers.

Their chief argument will be that the CBO is often wrong, that what they predict often doesn't come to pass. In a way that is true.

For example, last month's projections were made on the premise that everything that is supposed to occur in Washington does. The CBO came up with their forecast based on the premise that the president's temporary tax cuts will be phased out as scheduled and that Congress will continually re-authorize the current $87.5 billion for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is likely that war operation costs will be cut over time, but the president asked in his State of the Union speech for extending his tax cuts, which according to the CBO will balloon the deficit to nearly $4 trillion in 10 years. The bottom line is that the CBO projection is just a snapshot in time and doesn't take into account better or worse economic factors that no one can predict that many years out.

But even Federal Reserve Chairman Allan Greenspan was questioning the long-term impact of deficit spending last week in his congressional testimony. The bottom line is that the projected budget deficits are not defensible.

Guy Cosentino is a former mayor of the city of Auburn. He can be e-mailed at cozguytho@aol.com.