The White House acknowledged on Thursday that the budget deficit would climb back above $400 billion this year, erasing the brief improvement last year and complicating President Bush's vow to cut the deficit in half by 2009.
Joel Kaplan, the White House deputy budget director, predicted that the government's shortfall would climb to more than $400 billion in 2006 from $319 billion in 2005, largely because of relief efforts tied to Hurricane Katrina.
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