Politics
Obama sends budget to congress
U.S. President Barack Obama. PHOTO/File
President Barack Obama is sending Congress a new budget that seeks to achieve US$4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade through cuts in government spending and higher taxes on the wealthy. At the same time, he wants to boost spending in key areas such as transportation and education.
The spending blueprint is certain to spark an election-year battle with Republicans, who are vowing to oppose Obama’s tax hikes. They contend the president is not doing enough to attack a dangerous deficit problem.
In a fact sheet previewing the budget, the administration sought to cast the debate as a battle to protect the middle class following decades of eroding security and a deep recession.
“We must transform our budget from one focused on speculating, spending and borrowing to one constructed on the solid foundation of educating, innovating and building,” the administration said.
Obama was scheduled to speak Monday morning to students at Northern Virginia Community College to highlight the budget’s education initiatives.
Jacob Lew, the president’s chief of staff, made the rounds of the Sunday talk shows to promote the spending initiative as a balanced approach that will focus on the short-term imperative to provide more support to the economy while attacking long-term deficits.
While administration officials defended the plan as a balanced approach, Republicans attacked the effort for failing to do more to restrain the deficit, which Obama had promised in 2009 to cut in half by the end of his first term.
“We’re taking responsibility for dealing with the drivers of our debt,” Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget Committee, said Sunday. “Medicare is going bankrupt.”
