KAI RYSSDAL: The actual dollar amount's $2.9 trillion, give or take a couple of million. An 11 percent boost for the Pentagon next year. About 5 percent on average for some of the other cabinet agencies. Congressional Democrats are also promising a budget surplus by 2012.

We've called Maya MacGuineas at the Center for a Responsible Federal Budget to help explain the details. Maya, where do the Democrats figure they're going to get all that money?

MAYA MACGUINEAS: On the revenue side, sort of the biggest issue is that they're also going to attempt to extend some of the tax cuts. And the plan there is that they're going to extend the so-called middle-class tax cuts — those for people with children, a child credit; people who are married; and the lowest tax bracket, that's been brought down to 10 percent. And the real question is how they're going to be able to offset those costs. It's going to be quite costly to make those tax cuts permanent.

RYSSDAL: Right, and what they're talking about is something called pay as you go. It's been a big thing for them since the election. How's it gonna work?

MACGUINEAS: Pay as you go has really been the main point of fiscal discipline the Democrats have rallied around. And what pay as you go means is that anytime you cut taxes or you raise spending on certain programs — and those are entitlement programs, things like Social Security and Medicare and Veterans' health care programs . . . But any increases in those areas of spending have to be offset so they won't increase the deficit. That means that any tax cut has to be offset either by other tax increases or spending reductions. So, the point that pay-go brings us to is, it doesn't fix our deficit mess, but it means that you're not allowed to make it worse...

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