'Guns and tax cuts': How will Iraq impact Bush's plan for economy?

By The Washington Post and The Christian Science Monitor

1966, with spending in Vietnam on the rise, social programs growing and interest rates edging dangerously higher, Georgia's venerable Sen. Richard Russell asked "whether this nation, for all its wealth and resources, can fight a war ... and carry on a broad range of domestic spending — without a tax increase or a dangerous deficit."

"The president apparently believes that we can," the Democrat told his state's Legislature. "For the sake of the country ... I hope and pray that he is right."

Within two years, inflation was galloping, the federal deficit was climbing, and Lyndon Baines Johnson was forced to slam on the brakes with an unpopular tax increase to finance the war and slow the economy.

In Johnson's experience, some see a cautionary tale for President Bush.

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