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FACT CHECK: There are budget phantoms in the room

WASHINGTON (AP) -- When a president introduces a budget, there are always phantoms flitting around the room. President Barack Obama's spending plan sets loose a number of them.It counts on phantom savings from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's underpinned by tax increases Republicans won't let happen and program cuts fellow Democrats in Congress are all but certain to block.And it assumes rates of growth that the economy will have to become strikingly undead to achieve.A look at three budget ghosts, sometimes known as gimmicks:---BUDGET: Claims about $850 billion in savings from ending the wars and steers some $230 billion of that to highways.REALITY: There is no direct peace dividend from ending the wars because the government borrowed to pay for them. The government would have to keep borrowing that amount of money to have it to spend on something else.Counting the end of wars as a dividend is like a student coming out of college loaded with debt and aching to buy things, says Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. \When you finish college