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Obama plans a more transparent budget Reporting from Washington -- After eight years of budget practices that often camouflaged federal spending, President Obama is planning a new strategy of putting on the books as many costs as possible to demonstrate the extent of the nation's economic troubles, senior White House officials say. Obama's first budget, scheduled to be released in broad outline Thursday, will include at the outset money for the Iraq war, the military buildup in Afghanistan and other expenditures.Shox Basketball The approach is in contrast to that of the previous administration, which often tucked such costly commitments into separate spending requests that would go to Congress later. "The president is determined to treat the American people as adults and be straight up about what we're facing and what we need to do to move forward," said David Axelrod, senior advisor to the president. The new approach, which is likely to be set out in the president's address to Congress tonight, follows up on Obama's repeated campaign pledges to make government more transparent. Paradoxically, it also could make it easier for him to keep his promise to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term. By starting with a huge deficit now, he could slash spending in his fourth year. By then, costs, such as stimulus spending, war appropriations and others, would likely be gone or sharply reduced. For years, the White House and Congress have engaged in a kind of Kabuki theater around the federal deficit. The president would release a budget in February that would show declining deficits into the future. But that budget would exclude most war costs and use several unrealistic assumptions, including over-optimistic predictions of economic growth and rising federal revenue. "There were significant costs that were excluded from the budget because the Bush administration pretended that certain policies that everyone knew would continue wouldn't continue," said Jim Horney, a budget expert with the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. One practice was including revenues from the alternative minimum tax in the projections. Congress passed the AMT four decades ago to prevent millionaires from escaping taxes. But Nike Men Air Force 1 Highbecause lawmakers neglected to index the income levels for inflation, the higher tax rate would now hit a large swath of middle-income taxpayers unless lawmakers pass AMT relief -- which they do every year. But for budget reasons, the Bush administration continued to assume that the AMT would take effect in future years, raising tax revenue assumptions by nearly $1 trillion over 10 years. Similarly, every year the Bush administration would issue an initial deficit projection that was much higher than other economists' projections. That way, when the final deficit count was released, the administration could claim it had brought the deficit down. Deficits accumulated each year that President Bush was in office, from $158 billion in fiscal 2002 to $455 billion last year, totaling roughly $2.5 trillion altogether. The legacy of Bush's federal deficits leaves Obama in a difficult position, in that he has to make deficits worse in the short term. As he opened a fiscal summit with lawmakers and budget experts on Monday, the president emphasized the role that healthcare costs are playing in the deficit, calling it the "single most pressing long-term fiscal challenge we are facing, by far." In fact, by 2018, more than 51% of all healthcare spending in America will be done by federal, state and local government, totaling some $2.2 trillion, according to the latest estimates released today by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. In 2008, the government accounted for an estimated 46.6% of the nation's healthcare spending, with the majority provided by consumers and private insurance companies. For some lawmakers, the way to contain healthcare UGG Belfaircosts has nothing to do with Obama's idea of reform. "Looking ahead, we're hearing from some people that we can't reform government entitlement programs until we reform the entire healthcare system," said Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. "The problems with our healthcare system need fixing. But for a lot of people, healthcare reform is code for spending more, not less." As the president gears up to address Congress today and reveal his budget plans on Thursday, he will hark back to themes he sounded through the campaign, Axelrod said. "He has talked about energy independence; he has talked about healthcare and bringing down the cost and making it more widely available; he has talked about education," Axelrod said. "Those, in his mind, are the linchpins of a stronger economy and the signpost to a better future." He did not detail specifically how the presidentShox 2:40 will pursue the downsizing of entitlement programs, but said, "You'll see in the budget a commitment to cut and invest, to really attack the budget in a way that tries to free up room for our absolute priorities by cutting where we can." Particularly in the area of healthcare, Axelrod said, "If you're not willing to tackle that mountain, then you're not serious about budget reform." Before any of that can happen, though, the White House wants what it calls an "honest budgeting" process that accurately charts the scope of the challenge. "We want a budget that, to the best of our ability, shows what we're going to have to deal with over the next decade," he said. "I don't think that has been the practice in UGG Brookfieldthis town. The practice has been to sweep everything under the rug." Noam N. Levey in our Washington bureau contributed to this report.

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Cambodian art: Past to present

Hong Kong, China (CNN) --

Bamboo, woven into the shape of human stomachs. Red, sky blue and orange pencil shavings glued onto a large canvas form a woman's traditional hair clip. A collage of magazine clippings, drawings and found materials depict Cambodia's tumultuous modern history. These are a few of the offerings on hand in Hong Kong at one of the first large international exhibitions of artists from Cambodia. The work by 14 artists varies in practice-- Shox Ride & Plusvideo, photography, collage, wood shavings, paper, bamboo and painting-- as well as in themes, from reflecting on the Southeast Asian nation's genocidal Khmer Rouge regime to the emerging modern Cambodia, with traffic lights and all. "Every artist in this show is referencing ancient tradition and recent history," said Phnom Penh-based curator Erin Gleeson, noting the wall-size depiction in folded paper of the serpent Naga (which in Cambodian culture represents the people's mythical birth) to a collage of 20th-century Cambodia and its six different regime changes. "The show is looking at the present -- 'Forever Until Now' is the title -- and it is this lineage of the past, you see that in the show, and then you see artists that arrive at the present," she added. The show opens Friday and runs through March 22 at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. Gallery owner and director Katie de Tilly said she believed it was important the artists get international exposure. " ... it's really at the beginning of their art emergence.UGG Adirondack Boot II Obviously, they've had a very hard history," she said. "This is really the beginning of contemporary Cambodians who are expressing very original ideas in their artworks and I think that that's what makes it very unique and to show to the rest of the world." Cambodia, which lost an estimated one-quarter of its population or at least 1.7 million people -- including an estimated 90 percent of its artists -- under the 1970s Khmer Rouge regime, has a small but growing artistic community: there are some 50 practicing artists out of its 14 million people, Gleeson said. The genocide and ensuing war, which only ended in the last decade or so, stifled the development of the arts in one of the world's poorest countries. "The legacy of that is now in every facet of a developing society," said Gleeson, who noted the country had no art books when she arrived in 2002 on a fellowship to teach art history. "There's an absence of infrastructure for them, there's an absence of materials, there is no art store. ... they are quite inventive about mixing materials to make them of a higher quality or last longer, but in many cases they don't know archival techniques." The harsh weather conditions -- a dusty, hot season and a rainy monsoon -- add to the trying work conditions. "Everything's against them," she added. "Their parents in many cases are coming from a really disadvantaged background, as the majority of the country is economically." Some of the art included in the show looks at the Cambodia of today, such as Leang Seckon's "Three Greens" -- an acrylic painting showing children in school uniform crossing a Air Force 25road with a yellow light, red light and three green lights, along with cows and roosters. The piece shows the changes in a country that recently got stop lights, with animals, people and traffic mingling on the main roads of the capital. Sopheap Pich, a Cambodian-American whose family migrated to the U.S. in 1984, works with bamboo and rattan -- materials often used in Cambodian traditional farming and crafts -- to make sculptures. His work, "Cycle 2," is the joining of the stomachs of an infant and an elderly person that for him brought up ideas of Cambodian traditional village life. "You belong to each other, you help each other out," he said. "But also, if you look at the lines and you see how it's shaped by hand, it's not very perfect, so it's also about struggle... "You could say it's a cycle of trying to hold onto each other, now we are living everywhere in the world, Cambodians are all over the planet," he added. "All this technique and pattern that I am quite obsessed with ... it's about this idea of trying to hold on with very simple means." Chan Dany, a 25-year-old artist who graduated from one of the country's three art schools, creates textured patterns that appear almost like tapestry using pencil shavings in variousShox Allegria Glow colors. The works on display in the show are from a series based on Cambodian architectural decor, such as door and window shutter carvings, and include ancient Khmer forms whose shapes are derived from nature. "When I started learning art, the teacher introduced a lot of new ways of making art, new ideas that were very difficult for me, so I had to think a lot," he said through a translator. "So then I looked around at what my classmates were doing and I started to think about what they weren't using for their work, so I started to collect the things that they didn't use when they were making art and started to think about my way of making art using those materials." "I like the first piece I did (using the pencil shaving technique) because I had never done it this way before and since then I kept on making it," he said. The younger artists "seem to be expressing something more fresh," while the work by artists from the older generation is "much more heavy," de Tilly said. Some of the works of the Khmer Rouge period include a painting by Vann Nath, one of seven people to survive the regime's infamous S-21 torture prison. His painting, "Pray for Peace," UGG Adirondack Talldepicts women wearing traditional Cambodian funeral scarves praying en masse under troubled skies by stormy seas. Another work, Leang's "Prison Guard," tells the life of Duch, a former teacher who ran S-21 and goes on trial Tuesday before a U.N.-backed tribunal on charges that include crimes against humanity. The art scene has been growing slowly in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh over the last few years: Sopheap started a group to promote contemporary Cambodian art practices and two art institutes offer programs apart from the Royal University of Fine Arts. One factor that has also made Cambodian contemporary artists different from their counterparts, for example in neighboring Vietnam, has been the lack of outside influence, such as was the case with Chinese contemporary art 30 years ago, de Tilly said. "Cambodia still is very much influenced by itself and so the development is happening on a slower pace but as well very interesting," she said. "They seem to not have as much international exposure to materials, magazines, publications, so you really do feel -- it was the same just after the CulturalNike Air Force 1 Mid Revolution in China -- that they didn't have exposure to many publications and things, and so their art was developing at that moment in time." " ... it's very interesting to document it and see what's going to happen in the future," she said. Part of the exhibit will be shown at another of the gallery's venues in Hong Kong and will run through April 25.

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Donald Fehr: Steroids list to remain secret

Even after the revelation that Alex Rodriguez headed a list of 104 players who failed a steroids test six years ago, the executive director of the players' union called it "unlikely" that his association would follow the recommendation of several players to release the entire list. Now that the confidentiality of the list has been breached, Torii Hunter of the Angels and Lance Berkman of the Houston Astros are among the players calling for all of those who tested positive to be identified. Union chief Donald Fehr said Tuesday he expected UGG Whitleyto discuss the issue with players in coming weeks but said the anonymity promised to participants in the 2003 drug tests should be honored. "Whatever rights individual players had under those agreements have to be respected," Fehr said. On the eve of spring training, the stain of baseball's steroid era continued to spread. One day after Rodriguez -- baseball's highest-paid player and perhaps its best player -- confessed to using performance- enhancing drugs for three years, Miguel Tejada was charged with lying to Congress when he said he had not heard players talk about steroids and did not know of any teammates using them. Tejada is expected to plead guilty this morning in Washington. Although he could face up to one year in jail, federal sentencing guidelines call for probation or up to six months in jail, the Washington Post reported. The Astros have scheduled a news conference for Tejada this afternoon at Houston's Minute Maid Park. Spring training camps open this weekend, with Fehr scheduled to visit players in each camp starting Feb. 23. The topics are expected to include how Rodriguez's name might haveNike Women Air Force 1 Low Mid High been disclosed from a supposedly confidential list of players testing positive in 2003 and whether disclosing the entire list might now be prudent. "I'm upset that those names on the list came out," Hunter told The Times. "Someone dropped the ball. Those other 103 players, they might as well bring those names out too. If A-Rod's name is out there, others should be." Berkman called the release of a confidential test result "deplorable." "But, on the other hand, the competitive side of me, I'd like to know who took performance-enhancing drugs," he told the Houston Chronicle. "Those of us that have never taken anything like steroids or HGH or anything like that, I'd like to know who has." An American League player, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a union directive not to discuss internal business publicly, said players pressed Fehr last season on how the union would respond in the event a purportedly anonymous test result was disclosed. "There was lots of talk in spring training last year that the names would come out," the player said, "and we confronted Fehr in our meeting about it, that this was supposed to remain anonymous. "A lot of people like me want it to come out now that it's started. Lots of speculation about who's on there will be erased. "There's a side of me that says it should never come out, but there's another side of integrity. The majority of us did not cheat. I take pride in not cheating. It's a tragedy Shox Rollinthat we're all being lumped in [with the 104 names]." Fehr said he did not recall a "confrontation" in any meeting last spring but said he had discussed the issue with players since federal agents seized the test results in 2004. He said he expected to discuss the issue again this spring, given the Rodriguez report, and said he would listen to any players who wanted to make the case for releasing all 104 names. "I would talk to them and find out what the interest is," Fehr said. "Beyond that, it's hypothetical. But I think it's unlikely." Fehr said the union had consulted with lawyers about the possibility of an investigation into who might have disclosed Rodriguez's result, but he said no decisions had been reached. He said he was disturbed by the disclosure. "There were confidentiality orders in place," he said. "We hoped and expected those orders would be complied with." The Tejada case follows those of Barry Bonds and Roger Nike Men Air Force 1 LowClemens, in which the federal government has pursued players not for using performance-enhancing substances but for allegedly lying under oath by denying use. Whether Tejada used steroids is not at issue in the charges filed Tuesday. In an interview with Congressional investigators in 2005, Tejada said he never had heard players discuss steroids and was not aware of any of his Oakland Athletics teammates using steroids. In 2003, according to the Mitchell Report, Oakland teammate Adam Piatt said Tejada asked him about steroids and subsequently wrote two checks to Piatt for the purchase of steroids and HGH. Those checks -- for $3,200 and $3,100 -- were reproduced in the Mitchell Report. That report was releasedShox Bella IL in 2007. The inconsistencies with Tejada's 2005 interview prompted Congress to refer him to the Department of Justice for investigation. Times staff writers Mike DiGiovanna and Lance Pugmire contributed to this report.

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Fran Session: Sitting Spurs' stars raises several questions

Gregg Popovich gave Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Michael Finley Tuesday night off in Denver. Did Coach Pop give himself a mini-vacation as well? After all, he spent the entire night smiling and relaxing on the bench as his San Antonio Spurs "leftovers" put on an entertaining display of hustle and energy.Shox VC When the TV cameras zoomed in, the only thing missing from Popovich was a ukulele in one hand and an umbrella drink in the other. They say you can't tell the players without a scorecard. Then again, sometimes you can't tell the winners even with a box score. Was that victorious coach George Karl who emerged from a heated locker room discussion with his Denver Nuggets following their 104-96 victory (Highlights | Recap | Box Score) over the Spurs? "I don't think I have anything on my mind except anger," he said. Meanwhile, Popovich might as well have been lying on a beach with waves lapping at his toes. Is there such a thing as a good loss? Or maybe a loss that proves a point? Or even a loss that doesn't really mean anything at all? Those were all the questions that Popovich tossed up into the air with the opening tip when he sent his "Spurs Lite" lineup out onto the floor at the Pepsi Center without aNike Men Air Force 1 High single member of his "Big Three." Ginobili, he said, was "legitimately banged up" after bruising his left hip the night before at Golden State. The other two? "Parker makes the All-Star team and becomes hard to deal with, so we're going to sit him and teach him a lesson," Popovich cracked before the game. "Duncan says he wants to renegotiate his contract, so I said, 'Sit. I'm not talking to you.' " And for good measure, he let the venerable Finley rest his weary legs, too, even if it did end a streak of 284 consecutive games played. Then Popovich got coy. "For a variety of reasons, I don't think Timmy and Tony should play tonight," he said. It was, after all, just stop No. 48 in the meandering 82-game journey that is the NBA regular season schedule that often has no rhyme or reason. Was Popovich's motivation to tweak the nose of the schedule-makers at the league office back in New York who had forced his team to play in Oakland -- a high-intensity affair against the up-tempo Warriors that went into overtime -- on Monday night, then lose an hour traveling across a time zone for a UGG BelfairTuesday night game in Denver? Then toss another log on the silly fire when you consider that the Spurs won't play their next game until Sunday in Boston. Popovich wasn't copping to anything, just enjoying an evening where he didn't have to wince when one of his All-Stars had to limp off the court with a sprained ankle. That was Denver's Chauncey Billups, and that was just one more reason why Karl's head was ready to explode. So was it fair to the NBA fans that plopped down their hard-earned dollars in Denver to see Duncan, Parker and Ginobili and instead got Kurt Thomas, George Hill and Ime Udoka? Was it fair to the spirit of competition throughout the league for the Spurs to mail one in? Except that as Popovich's beatific smile and Karl's post-game rant showed, it was the Nuggets who FedEx-ed in an effort that barely got them to their destination. Everyone knows it's a hard-knock life for the NBA's fresh Nike Shox Explodineprinces, being forced to crisscross the country in custom charter jets. Sometimes the geography and the calendar are more than a little wacky. But in the 1971-72 season, when the Lakers set the all-time record with their 33-game winning streak, they played back-to- back-to-back games -- three in three nights -- on three different occasions. Popovich doesn't care what they did in the old days. Frankly, he doesn't care about anything that isn't in the absolute best interest of his team right here and now. He has never liked playing all of the corporate games, about making money for the league, about being a good NBA partner. He doesn't really care what others think. He just wants to take care of his players and win. Which is one reason why he's soNike Men Air Force 1 Low very, very good. In a way, it's funny. For so many years, people have complained about having to watch Duncan, Parker and Ginobili's "dull and boring" style while they won championships. Now there are peeps of complaint when you don't get to watch them. But who won and who really lost? The victory gave the Nuggets the season series 2-1 and the first tie-breaker over the Spurs in a tight Western Conference race. But what did this game prove to San Antonio or to Denver that will matter in the playoffs? In the Nuggets' other win, back in November, Ginobili and Parker were both out. The only time both teams were at full strength, the Spurs went into Denver and whipped theUGG Brookfield Nuggets by 17. So do the Nuggets feel that they have an edge in a potential playoff meeting? Have the Spurs given up anything at all? Go ahead and ask a grinning Popovich. And get him a refill and a new umbrella for his drink while you're at it.

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Stimulus plan's job numbers get 2nd look

By Richard Wolf, USA TODAY WASHINGTON —

Looking for a job or fear losing your own? President Obama says he can help 3 million to 4 million of you. That could be optimistic, however. The CongressionalShox Ride & Plus Budget Office says Obama's economic stimulus package of spending programs and tax cuts would create 1.2 million to 3.6 million jobs. The economic consulting firm IHS Global Insight puts the number at 2.6 million. Most of the jobs would only replace those lost to the recession. Even with the stimulus package, the administration estimates that unemployment would be 7% at the end of 2010 — barely below the current 7.2% rate. As the Senate began debate on the package Monday, much of the focus turned to jobs: How many there would be, how quickly they could be created, how much they would pay and with Air Force 25what benefits, and who would get them. "The bottom line is this: You've got a piece of legislation that creates jobs," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said after several questions. "The latest statistics based on the economic reports show that 90% of these jobs are private-sector jobs." FIND MORE STORIES IN: Florida | Barack Obama | White House | Philadelphia | United States Senate | Michigan | Ohio | New York | Columbus | Moody | Center | Economy.com | Georgetown University | Congressional Budget Office | Robert Gibbs | Change | Policy Priorities | IHS Global Insight | Pell | Jared Bernstein | Vice President Biden | Chad Stone | Council of Economic Advisors Republicans in Congress have criticized elements of the emerging package for not creating enough jobs. House Minority Leader John Boehner and others cite investments that do notUGG Adirondack Boot II immediately create jobs, such as an increase in the size of Pell grants for low-income college students. Others say investing in education would be an indirect benefit by helping students compete for better jobs in the future. Indirect benefits will be "fairly widely dispersed through the economy … so all kinds of jobs will be created," says Chad Stone, chief economist for the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. As an example of jobs that could be saved, Gibbs cited 27 police recruits in Columbus, Ohio, who were laid off last week before graduating from the police academy. The quickest infusion of money into the economy under the two-year, $819 billion House bill or $885 billion Senate version would come from aid to states, help for the unemployed, and tax cuts for consumers and businesses. Those produce jobs indirectly. Then there are jobs that would be created as a direct result ofShox Allegria Glow new spending on education, health care, renewable energy sources and public infrastructure such as highways and bridges. Those could take longer to materialize — well into 2011, the White House says. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com, estimates the construction industry would see a 6.6% boost in jobs, by far the largest of any industry. All states would be helped, he says; those hardest hit by losses in housing, financial services and the auto industry — such as Florida, New York andNike Air Force 1 Mid Michigan — would benefit the most. The administration's estimate comes from a report last month by two of its leading economists. Christina Romer, chairwoman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden's top economic adviser, project that 1.5 million jobs would be created directly and 2.2 million as a result of indirect improvements in the economy. They say the figures are subject to large margins of error. "The uncertainty is surely higher than normal now because the current recession is unusual, both in its fundamental causes and its severity," Romer and Bernstein wrote. The largest increases, the report says, would be in construction, manufacturing, retail trade, and leisure and hospitality, UGG Adirondack Tallwhich employ large numbers of low- and middle-income workers. Yet others say the legislation needs to help those with the least schooling and job skills. "We know these people are going to take the biggest beating during the downturn," says Harry Holzer, a public policy professor at Georgetown University. The administration report projects that women would get about 42% of the jobs created or saved, even though they lost only 20% of the jobs in the recession. Obama has noted the importance of creating "green jobs" in the field of renewable energy. A middle-class task force he created last week will hold its first meeting in Philadelphia later this month on the topic. A coalition of labor unions will release a report today questioning whether many of them would be low-paying jobs without benefits. "Not all green jobs being created are good jobs," says Noreen Nielsen of the labor group Change to Win.

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