SANDER M. LEVIN, A Democratic representative from Michigan, questioning surplus estimates underpinning the plan.
The Republican National Committee also reported that it had $36 million on hand as of June 30, with no debt, compared with a $2 million surplus for its Democratic counterpart.
The president inherited the largest deficit in the history of the country from an administration that had, when it came into power eight years previous, inherited budget surpluses from a Democratic president.
Yet, among Republicans, the goal is as much to keep the growing federal budget surplus off limits to Democratic spending proposals as it is to reduce the debt.
Mr. Conrad said his position had been the same throughout this year's budget debate, but his language represented a clear shift in emphasis from the longstanding Democratic position that the Social Security surplus was sacrosanct.
Our last Democratic president left office with a surplus that Bush whittled away to pay for two wars and color-coded threat assessment charts.
And if you are one of the millions and millions of families who were able to buy a new home because this Democratic administration turned their deficits into surpluses, you know the last eight years were not squandered.
Second, even if it seems remote to most citizens, any democratic deficit is made up by a surplus of benefits, from cheap air travel to lower telephone-roaming charges.
In a report completed on Friday, the Democratic staff of the House Budget Committee estimated that the surplus for the 10 years ending in 2011 would be $1.79 trillion, compared with a projection by the Congressional Budget Office a year ago of $5.61 trillion for the same period.
The surplus, said Senator Tom Daschle of South Dakota, the Democratic leader, "evaporates if the C.B.O. is off by one half of one percent over a 10-year period".
