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Obama unveils $3.8T spending plan
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By Martin Crutsinger,
The Associated Press
8:48 PM Monday, February 13, 2012
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama unveiled a $3.8 trillion spending plan on Monday for 2013 that seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade but does little to restrain growth in the government’s huge health benefit programs, a major cause of future deficits.
Obama’s new budget was immediately attacked by Republicans as a retread of previously rejected ideas. The budget battle is likely to be a major component of the fall election campaign.
The president would achieve $1.5 trillion of the deficit reductions in tax increases on the wealthy and by removing certain corporate tax breaks. Obama rejected GOP charges of class warfare. In his budget message, he said, “This is not about class warfare. This is about the nation’s welfare.”
In a message that repeated populist themes Obama also sounded in his State of the Union address, the president defended his proposed tax increases on the wealthy, saying it was important that the burden of getting deficits under control be a shared responsibility.
“This is about making fair choices that benefit not just the people who have done fantastically well over the last few decades but that also benefit the middle class, those fighting to get into the middle class and the economy as a whole,” Obama said.
Area officials hadn’t studied all of the President’s budget proposals on Monday, but voiced a need for smaller government and more effort to balance the budget.
“They need to balance the budget and balance it now,” said Butler County Commission President Don Dixon. “They are not going to spend our way out of this, they have already tried that.”
He added the size of government needs to shrink and small businesses need to have the confidence to create new jobs.
David Young, Warren County Commission president, agreed money for infrastructure projects didn’t work in the past and he believes Obama has learned that the budget must be cut.
“He has come to the realization he has to cut spending,” Young said. “That is good politics right now. It plays well to the public.”
He added he totally disagrees with the president’s direction, but “at least he had cut spending.”
More taxation of millionaires is not the answer, Young said, because those people have options and will simply move their money.
“When you have that much money, you have options,” Young said. He noted the wealthy are paying significant chunk of taxes through investments that are not income.
Obama used an appearance before students at Northern Virginia Community College to unveil the budget and highlight a $8 billion proposal that aims at boosting the ability of the nation’s community colleges to train students for the jobs of the future. He told the students his budget was a “reflection of shared responsibility.”
While administration officials defended the overall plan as a balanced approach, Republicans attacked it as failing to enough to restrain the deficit, which Obama had promised in 2009 to cut in half by the end of his first term.
“This isn’t really a budget at all. It’s a campaign document,” said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. “The president is shirking his responsibility to lead and using this budget to divide.”
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney attacked Obama’s spending plan for failing to “take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis.”
The Obama budget stuck to the caps on annual appropriations approved in August that are designed to save $1 trillion over the next decade. It also put forward $1.5 trillion in higher taxes, primarily by allowing the Bush-era tax cuts to expire at the end of this year for families making $250,000 or more per year.
Staff writer Lauren Pack contributed to this report.
The $3.8 trillion proposal for fiscal 2013 would be an increase of 0.2 percent over this year’s budget.
This year’s deficit will be $1.33 trillion, the fourth straight of more than $1 trillion in red ink.
The budget would make $4 trillion in deficit reductions over the next 10 years.
$1.5 trillion of the deficit reductions would come from t increases on the wealthy and by removing certain corporate tax breaks.
Obama is seeking more than $350 billion in measures to boost economic growth and job creation.
Growth in Medicare and Medicaid spending would slow by about $360 billion over the next decade.
Republicans criticized Obama’s budget as recycled proposals.
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