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WASHINGTON (AP) -- Barack Obama accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night with a lofty vision for the nation's future that is far easier to articulate than to accomplish.

The next occupant of the White House will inherit a half-trillion-dollar budget deficit that will severely crimp any plans for spending on new programs, as well as the messy endgame of the war in Iraq and growing energy and health-care challenges. A look at Obama's promises and the realities he would confront:

THE ECONOMY AND DEFICITS

The promise: Obama has pledged to attack the weak economy with another stimulus plan to follow the $168 billion package of tax rebates for individuals and tax breaks for businesses that Congress passed last February. Obama's stimulus would include tax rebates, aid to state and local governments and increased spending for infrastructure projects. He would also increase spending in other areas such as alternative energy programs. Obama promised to "go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less."

The problem: Obama's spending plans and middle-class tax relief will collide with the hard reality of exploding budget deficits. The Congressional Budget Office projects this year's deficit will hit $400 billion, driven higher by the weak economy and the stimulus program Congress has already passed. And the Bush administration is forecasting that next year's imbalance will hit an all-time high of $482 billion.

TAXES

The promise: Retain President Bush's tax cuts for families making less than $250,000 a year and provide more relief to the squeezed middle class by creating new tax breaks for lower-income families; extend the current "patch" that keeps the Alternative Minimum Tax, designed to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, from hitting more middle-class families; exempt seniors making less than $50,000 per year from paying income taxes, expand the tax credit for college and provide incentives to encourage savings, and help pay for child care and pay mortgage expenses. "Change means a tax code that doesn't reward the lobbyists who wrote it," Obama said, "but the American workers and small businesses who deserve it."

The problem: Obama's tax proposals come with a hefty price tag. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, a joint effort of the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution, estimates that Obama's tax proposals would reduce projected tax revenue by $2.95 trillion over the next decade, compared to an estimate of what would happen if Bush's tax cuts were to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

ENERGY

The promise: A short-term rebate of $1,000 per couple to help with rising energy costs; release of up to 70 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and investment of $15 billion a year over the next decade to encourage renewable energy, clean-coal technology and electric cars. "In 10 years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East," Obama said.

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