Employees at the Government Printing Office in Washington on Tuesday prepare to sell copies of the budget. (Reuters)

Washington, Feb. 3: It was a mere coincidence, brought on by circumstances and political expediency. But conspiracy theorists in America’s South Asian circles had a field day today speculating on the new, hitherto unsuspected dimensions of the Indo-US “natural” alliance, a concept coined by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee four years ago.

Today’s speculation was fuelled by an identical set of events in Washington and New Delhi, which saw their political classes acting similarly in pursuit of their admittedly divergent interests and destiny.

Within less than 24 hours of each other, the Vajpayee government and the Bush administration presented their budgets to their respective legislatures.

Both governments are facing re-election this year and both budgets reeked of their pre-poll character.

If finance minister Jaswant Singh’s interim budget promised to rein in the fiscal deficit, President George W. Bush’s projected deficit was record high.

While Singh offered sops to a wide variety of constituencies of voters, Bush has cut or eliminated as many as 128 welfare programmes ranging from school dropout prevention to clean water projects.

His opponents say that is the only way the present White House can sustain its tax cuts for the wealthiest and schemes that benefit wealthy donors to poll coffers.

Unlike India’s ruling parties, which have unitedly welcomed Singh’s interim budget, its US counterpart has drawn the ire of the Republicans and Democrats alike. There was criticism in both capitals that their respective governments were going outside the normal budget mechanism to offer financial lollipops to vote banks.

Republicans have accused Bush of seeking to be profligate. Democrats have slammed him with the charge of wrong priorities.

It is a reflection of the jittery state of today’s Washington that the equivalent here of the finance secretary’s budget briefing in New Delhi had to be abruptly cancelled, depriving the administration of a chance to defend itself.

Treasury secretary John Snow and White House budget director Joshua Bolten were to have appeared for televised hearings on the budget before Senate committees today. But the hearings had to be postponed because a white powdery substance, suspected to be highly poisonous ricin, was discovered in a Senate office, leading to the building's closure.