President Bush has dropped another limp and cowardly budget on the American public.

Sure, the $2.77 trillion plan raises spending for defense, security and the Iraq war. But it continues the cuts in domestic programs that have become the hallmark of the Bush administration and the Republican Congress. In short, he wants to spend more on items that have been manipulated to play on people's fears and less on help to those who are vulnerable, powerless and silent -- a politically easy road to take.

The worst part is, while pretending to be fiscally prudent, Mr. Bush still wants to make his tax cuts permanent -- a populist measure that will only fuel annual deficits and raise the national debt on America's next generation. If the president were a true fiscal conservative, he would not spend money he doesn't have -- on Iraq or anything else -- and he would not dump on tomorrow's taxpayers the free-spending ways of his administration.

The whole scheme shows how bogus are the president's entreaties for Americans at home to support the troops abroad. If the war is worth fighting and Middle East democracy worth spreading, then President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be the first to argue that Americans must pay for them and that new tax cuts can wait. Instead, they lack the courage of their convictions and seek to spend more on war and defense while requiring Americans to sacrifice nothing.

Call it the feel-good presidency of George Bush, in which only the old and the young face consequences from administration choices -- the old by absorbing cuts in programs like Medicare, the young by inheriting massive debt for adventures long past.

The president and his minions try to mask the domestic cuts by pitching something called an "ownership society." But, in practice, it amounts to a fend-for-yourself nation in which individuals with little or no resources must claw their way to health insurance and retirement savings with little support from government.

This budget and this administration promise all that and less. It would be refreshing to have a president who is brave enough to ask the adult public -- and not Americans being conceived in the womb today -- to pay for his agenda. George W. Bush still doesn't have the spine for it, but maybe the Congress does.