One of the first questions surrounding President Bush’s budget is whether it is serious or an attempt at political grandstanding meant to burnish his damaged bona fides on the deficit.

If it’s serious, then the budget’s cruelty is matched only by the smoke-and-mirrors tricks that the administration is using to hide serious – and predictable – expenses.

If it’s about political theater, then the president deserves kudos for startling – and strangling – some sacred cows, and shaking the Washington lobbyist establishment with arrows directed at popular programs. Too bad it flunks on believability.

The budget reduces domestic spending, provides more money for the military and homeland security, and ignores the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the proposed restructuring of Social Security and the alternative minimum tax, while Medicare, the white whale of the federal budget, receives scant attention, other than hopeful predictions that costs won’t grow so fast.

Maine does not fare well in the president’s plans. It’s as if he looked at an electoral map and crossed off programs important to blue states.

Take heating assistance: According to Sen. Olympia Snowe, the administration’s budget proposes a 4.3 percent cut for the regular Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program and a 32.8 percent decrease in emergency funding for it. Maine’s total projected funding would be reduced by $1.15 million. The state would get less money, while the cost of heating oil is 50 percent higher than last year.

The president’s plans to curtail shipbuilding could be disastrous for Bath Iron Works and its 6,000 employees. The budget would reduce from 12 to 5 the number of new destroyers being built. The cut could wreak havoc across the state.

Bush says states are gaming the Medicaid system, so he wants to squeeze $45 billion out of the program over 10 years. But it was the Department of Health and Human Services that created the rules and set up the boundaries. If states are operating within those constraints, it’s unfair to characterize it as cheating. Instead of working with governors to reduce Medicaid, the president instead swings a sickle at the last line of protection for poor families without insurance.

Amtrak, which operates the Downeaster service from Portland to Boston and runs successful trains up and down the Northeast corridor, would lose its subsidies. If it happens, it could be the death blow for passenger rail service in the United States.

Bush targets programs that aren’t responsible for bloating the budget deficit, but provide aid to some of the country’s poorest citizens. As many as 300,000 people could lose food stamps. Adult education programs and Upward Bound would be scrapped. And many veterans would be required to pay more for their prescription drugs and medical care.

Gov. Baldacci’s staff is crunching the numbers to gauge the dollar-for-dollar impact of the budget on Maine. The results should be ready today. But we don’t need a team of accountants to figure out that the consequences could be dire.

Despite the song and dance about tough choices and necessary spending discipline, this budget is an illustration of the president’s priorities. He will do whatever is necessary to protect – and make permanent – the tax cuts that passed during his first term.

This means shifting money from programs for the poor to the rich. And it means hiding the almost $5 billion a month being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Bush’s budget would do some good things. Tackling farm subsidies takes political courage, and there’s a clear need to expand the military, which is addressed.

But the trade-offs Bush requires go too far. Next year alone, the president’s tax cuts, which are skewed toward the wealthiest, will cost almost $200 billion. The choice he presents is a false one. It’s a question of revenue as much as spending, but he’s kept his tax policies off the table.

Much of the worst in the budget is unlikely to survive the appropriations dons in Congress, who will fight for their home-state programs and constituents.

Good. Bush’s proposal for Maine would push people out of work while undermining the social supports meant to protect them during the worst times.

And, for all the talk of discipline, this budget doesn’t reduce the deficit. It would be bigger than it was last year at $427 billion.