That budget sustains a web of salaries and subsidies to teachers' unions, national electricity company workers, farmers unions, state employees and Pemex workers.
As president he has presided over a time of rising inflation and unemployment, but has pumped oil revenues into the budget, sustaining a semblance of growth and buying good will among civil servants, the military and the retired.
In fact, where the threat is real or growing - from rogue states or from short-to-medium range missiles that can hit our deployed troops or our allies and friends - this budget sustains or increases funding.
Republicans sense a fresh opening surrounding Mr. Obama, after painful budget talks, sustained high unemployment and the lowering of the nation's credit rating.
No one in office can produce a coherent account of why this money is needed: the ministry's budget is sustained by the greed of contractors and nostalgia for imperium long passed.
Damascus is no longer paying the salaries of civil servants living in the liberated zones and there is no budget to sustain basic public services.
Foreign Minister Alain Juppé, himself once seen as a potential president, came out last week for a "real European federation," with a common economic government and a bigger central budget to sustain the common currency.
The Relevancy Mr. McCain hopes to appeal to working-class voters with broader arguments concerning his pledge to control spending, balance the budget and sustain the growth of exports.
In the words of the historian John Morton Blum, Mr. Morgenthau said he believed recovery "depended on the willingness of business to increase investments, and this in turn was a function of business confidence," adding, "In his view only a balanced budget could sustain that confidence".
Families across the country have been living beyond their means or taking extreme cuts to their budget to sustain their city's cost of living.
