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The headline might make you think that this week's column is about the additional amount Washington will appropriate for disaster assistance following Hurricane Isabel, and that spending's impact on the federal government's bottom line. Not so.

The Congressional Budget Office last week indicated that the fiscal 2003 deficit, which the Office of Management and Budget said only three months ago would be $455 billion, would actually be $374 billion. Not surprisingly, there was an almost immediate attempt by some to say that rejoicing was in order because the CBO numbers showed the budget situation improving.

First forecasting that the deficit will be $455 billion and then saying that a $374 billion shortfall should be seen as good news is essentially what the electric utilities in many mid-Atlantic states did after Hurricane Isabel left hundreds of thousands of customers in the dark.

The power companies first set up a phony schedule of a week or two for getting the electricity back on. They then compared their actual repair times to this self-imposed timetable and gave themselves credit for restoring service in most homes before the period they specified was over.

But who ever said that a week or so was how long it should take to get the power back on? The better measure of the utilities' success might have been the number of homes that continued to be without electric service after two or three days, or perhaps that so many homes lost power at all. But that was not what would show the utilities in the best possible light, so that's not what they wanted to use to determine their progress.

The same is true about the latest deficit estimate.

First, there was some question about the veracity of the $455 billion estimate when it was initially released in the mid-session review in July. Some Wall Street analysts said almost from the beginning that the forecast far exceeded what would actually happen and was likely an attempt by the administration to make things look better later in the year when the actual number came in lower. This theory took on added life a month or so later when CBO came out with a $401 billion revised deficit estimate for 2003 - $54 billion less than what OMB was estimating.

Now, with an actual deficit of around $374 billion, the conspiracy theory that those Wall Street analysts first put forward seems almost oracle-like.

Second, even if it is less than advertised, a $374 billion deficit is still astoundingly large - even by Washington standards. In many ways, it's unprecedented:

• It is $84 billion more than the previous highest nominal federal deficit in history.
• It is more than double the deficit from the previous year, which - at $158 billion - was already significant.
• The $216 billion change from 2002 to 2003 is the largest one-year federal deficit increase in U.S. history.

Most important, however, the $374 billion is really only a way station on the road to the even higher deficits everyone agrees are ahead. Bush administration budget director Joshua Bolten told reporters last week that the improvement from what OMB had forecast earlier would not prevent the deficit from exceeding $500 billion in 2004.

Bolten also attempted another utility-like maneuver when he repeated the mantra the White House has been using on the budget for sometime - that the administration's policies will cut the deficit in half by the end of fiscal 2008. The key, however, is that these same policies will first run up the deficit to $500 billion or more. Half of that is nothing to be proud of, especially since there was a triple digit surplus when the administration began. Compared to that, a $250 billion deficit would be anything but an accomplishment.

All of this makes you wonder if, weeks after Hurricane Isabel, a lot of us are still being left in the dark.

Question Of The Week

Last Week's Question. What happens to the continuing resolution funding provision for a federal agency or department when its regular appropriation is enacted? The technically correct answer is "anything that Congress and the president agree to do." The typical way this is handled, however, is that the continuing resolution is superceded by the regular appropriation as soon as it is signed into law by the president. The CR continues to apply to all other agencies and departments until their appropriations are enacted or the CR expires.

The winner of the "I Won A 2003 Budget Battle" mouse pad, who was selected at random from all those who got this one right, is Linda Jordan, who works in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

This Week's Question. One of the biggest issues in the California gubernatorial recall election held last week was the state's $38 billion budget deficit. That will also be the most visible issue Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) will have to deal with as soon as he takes office. The question: What one nontraditional thing would you recommend he do immediately to reduce the California deficit? For example, how about a new state-imposed $1 fee (not a tax, of course) for watching any Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or using the phrase "I'll be back"?

Click here to send in your response, which must be received by 5 p.m. PDT on Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003. You must include a mailing address so we can send you the mouse pad if you win.

Note to government employees: Because of security procedures at many offices and facilities, your home address will be the best way to make sure the mouse pad actually gets to you.