Fox, a former Coca-Cola executive, has long said he plans to fight Mexico's social problems with stable economic strength, rather than by handing money to the country's poor, as former Mexican governments tended to do.
"There aren't that many resources around from which he can use to increase expenditures on health and education," said Sidney Weintraub of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
The budget calls for increasing tax revenues by 1.7 percent, and recognizes the potential for a drop in record-high oil prices, which have contributed to one of the strongest Mexican economies in decades.
On the day of his inauguration, Fox promised to lower inflation and interest rates while increasing wages and the availability of credit.
Many of the nation's poor have spent a lifetime barely surviving on government programs, which often were created or expanded around election time in return for votes for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, which had ruled Mexico since 1929.
As the former ruling party phased out those programs, then lost its first presidential election ever in July, many poor Mexicans say they are left with nothing.
In the slums of Tabasco state, where rain often fills cinderblock houses with waist-deep water for months at a time, residents bitterly complain about sporadic food handouts and the fact that no one has come by to offer dry mattresses or clothing.
Fox has pledged not to forget the disenfranchised, saying he will invest revenues from the country's growing economy to improve education and other public services.
Yet Mexico's strong economy Ñ which is expected to register a whopping 7 percent growth this year Ñ is largely dependent on U.S. economic growth, which is slowing after a decade of expansion.
Fox has already pledged to slow growth to below 4.5 percent next year, a bid to calm investors nervous that the economy could overheat, sparking inflation. He has promised to keep inflation in check at 6.5 percent.
His budget will be similar to last year's, continuing austerity measures started under former President Ernesto Zedillo and cutting the country's fiscal deficit to 0.5 percent of the gross domestic product, compared with 1 percent last year.
While Fox's government is confident the budget will be easily passed by its December 31 deadline, the former ruling party will likely push for higher spending to fight poverty and improve education and health.
Fox also faces the challenge of pushing the budget through a divided Congress, which until recently was dominated by the ruling party and had simply rubber-stamped legislation passed down from the president.