Politics
Obama sends budget to congress
Ryan is preparing an alternative to Obama’s budget that will be similar to a measure that the House approved last year but failed in the Senate.
This year’s budget debate is expected to dominate the presidential contest and congressional elections with the issue not finally resolved probably until a lame-duck session of Congress after the November election when lawmakers will have to decide what to do with expiring Bush-era tax cuts and looming across-the-board spending cuts.
Obama’s spending plan for the budget year that begins October 1 projects a deficit for this year of US$1.33 trillion. That would mean four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits.
Under Obama’s outline, the deficit would decline to US$901 billion in 2013 with continued improvements shrinking the deficit to US$575 billion in 2018.
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said Democrats did not want to vote on Obama’s spending plan, so he would once again put it forward for a Senate vote where he predicted it would fail as it did last year.
Lew blamed House Republicans for pushing extreme measures rather than trying to reach consensus with Democrats and avoid the kinds of last-minute crises that roiled financial markets in 2011, such as the summer showdown over raising the government’s borrowing limit.
“Congress didn’t do a great job last year. It drove right to the edge of the cliff on occasion after occasion,” Lew said.
According to the White House fact sheet, Obama’s budget will adhere closely to the approach he outlined in September in a submission to the congressional “supercommittee” that failed to agree on at least US$1.2 trillion in additional spending cuts to keep across-the-board cuts from taking effect next January.
