When you have a surplus, you use it for one-time expenditures.

Spending in 2000 would be $17.8 billion, about the same as what the department is spending this year, including those one-time expenditures.

Based on this philosophy, it is better to spend a surplus on one-time expenditures.

Mr. Wolfowitz urged Congress to approve the package, saying it was made up of "one-time expenditures."

Treating them would require $2 billion a year more than the Government is now spending on treatment, plus $1 billion in initial one-time expenditures, the report said.

Many one-time expenditures, like programs for public safety, are likely to be dropped, and most legislators are abandoning hopes for more spending on pet projects, like centers for the elderly and swimming pools.

Excluding costs associated with layoffs and other one-time expenditures, Motorola earned $132 million, or 6 cents a share, 3 cents higher than the consensus projection of analysts polled by Thomson First Call.

Mr. Levy argues that revenues from volatile sources, like capital gains, should have special treatment in budgeting: one-time revenue increases should be tied to one-time expenditures or automatically put into a rainy day fund.

But the overall size of the general fund budget would actually decline by 2.8 percent in the year that begins on July 1, to $6.8 billion, not counting such one-time expenditures as the cost of setting up the wage tax system.

The Energy Department's operating budget for the 2000 fiscal year would rise $717 million, or 4.1 percent about the 1999 figure, not counting one-time expenditures this year like buying enriched uranium from Russia and helping that country safeguard plutonium.