The debt is falling!

But it's not what you think(my bold):

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office is likely to estimate Tuesday that shortfalls over the next 10 years will total perhaps $1 trillion less than the $2.3 trillion in red ink it forecast last September, congressional aides say.

The chief explanation for the improvement, however, is likely to be an anomaly based on how the budget office is required to project spending -- in this case the costs of war.

To have a neutral starting point for its calculations, the budget office is required by Congress to look at existing laws. It is prohibited from assuming lawmakers will enact changes.

When the budget office issued its last update in September, it assumed the roughly $112 billion Congress approved for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan last year would be repeated every year for a decade.

But Congress has yet to approve any war money in 2005. So the budget office is required to assume that there won't be any new war funds provided this year.

Of course, that is not true. In coming weeks, the White House is expected to request about $75 billion or more for this year's war spending -- money that if requested earlier would have made the budget office's 10-year projection much higher.

In its September report, the budget office calculated that last year's war spending added $1.1 trillion to 10-year deficits, plus another $300 billion in extra interest costs the government would incur.

Heck, yeah! Now let's go get Iran! Freedom is on the march!