WASHINGTON (AP) – The Congressional Budget Office is predicting the U.S. government will accumulate another $855 billion in deficits over the next decade, excluding the costs of President George W. Bush’s revised state pension plan and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The report, described by a congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity, was being released Tuesday, the same day administration officials were expected to describe Bush’s request for fresh $80 billion request to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan this year.

The deficit projections for the years 2006 through 2015 is almost two-thirds smaller than what congressional budget analysts predicted last fall, but the drop is largely due to estimating quirks that required them to exclude future Iraq and Afghanistan war costs. Last September, their 10-year deficit estimate was $2.3 trillion.

The CBO now also projects this year’s shortfall will be $368 billion. That was close to the $348 billion deficit for 2005 it forecast last fall. If the estimate proves accurate, it would be the third-largest deficit ever in dollar terms, behind only last year’s $412 billion and the $377 billion gap of 2003.

Besides lacking war costs, the budget office’s deficit estimates also omitted the price tags of Bush’s goal of revamping Social Security, which could cost $1 trillion to $2 trillion and dominate this year’s legislative agenda; an estimated $1.8 trillion price tag of extending Bush’s tax cuts and easing the impact the alternative minimum tax would have on middle-income Americans; and other expenses.