President Obama will roll out a $3.7 trillion budget blueprint Monday that would trim or terminate more than 200 federal programs next year and make key investments in education, transportation and research in a bid to boost the nation’s economy and reduce record budget deficits.
Senior administration officials cast the document as a responsible alternative to the deep spending cuts that Republicans will urge in a vote this week on the House floor. Obama’s plan would reduce deficits by more than $1.1 trillion over the next decade, the officials said, with two-thirds of the money coming from spending cuts that would strike hard at programs that Democrats have long favored.
However, the president also will call for targeted investments that would increase funding for energy and medical research, expand the tax credit for corporate research and development, pay to train 100,000 new science and math teachers, and fund a wireless network that would bring high-speed Internet access to 98 percent of Americans.
“The debate in Washington is not whether to cut or to spend. We both agree we should cut,” said a senior administration official, who briefed reporters Sunday night on the condition of anonymity because the budget had not been released. “The question is how we cut and what we cut.”
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>The Republicans want to cut. Why the hell did they not demand all these cuts when Bush was in office.
Obama is spending trillion dollars a year more than Bush ever did. Republicans should have cut Bush’s spending as well, but this is even worse, with trillion dollar deficits.
Some number from the Obama budget plan:
$3.73 trillion — total spending this year (25 percent of GDP).
$46 trillion — total spending over the next decade.
$8.7 trillion — total new spending over the same period.
$26.3 trillion — Total new debt, including entitlement obligations, predicted by 2021.
$7.2 trillion — Total deficit predicted by the end of the decade.
$1.1 trillion — How much the White House estimates the proposal will reduce the deficit over the next ten years.
$4 trillion — How much the president’s deficit commission recommended reducing the deficit over the next ten years to avoid financial catastrophe.
$1.6 trillion — The revised deficit project for 2011 (11 percent of GDP), up from $1.3 trillion in 2010.
$2 trillion — Amount the budget will raise taxes on business and upper-income families over the next ten years, which includes letting the Bush-era tax rates expire in 2012 (for incomes $250,000 and up).
$50 billion — Amount the administration plans to spend this year on infrastructure and transportation “investments.”
$30 billion — Amount dedicated to a “National Infrastructure Bank to invest in projects of regional or national significance to the economy,” including the much-touted high-speed rail initiative.
$77.4 billion — Funding allocated for the Department of Education, a 22 percent increase from 2010 levels, and a 35 percent increase from 2008 levels.
$29.5 billion — Total spending on the Department of Energy, a 22 percent increase from 2008 levels.
$9.9 billion — Funding allocated for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a 30 percent increase from 2008 levels.
$148 billion — Total amount the White House plans to spend next year on research and development programs.
8.2 percent — Predicted unemployment rate in 2012.
Zero — Political risk the president was willing to assume by proposing meaningful reform to entitlement programs. That said, Republicans haven’t exactly been willing to stick their necks either, at least not yet.
I think the feds should follow Texas lead.
It is called 0 base line budgets
every dpt starts with 0 dollars in their budget and then they write a budget of exactly what they need instead of the federal model of a standard 4% increase over previous year no matter what.
Then start deleting things like the NEA , PBS, the dept of education, HUD , and many other useless depts that are already duplicated by the individual states. then you get to the real nut cutting on social sec and medicare both should be grandfathered out of existence, set a date and if you were born before that date you will still pay some social sec taxes but you will never receive benefits then set up mandatory personal retirement accts that move with you between jobs so you control you retirement not some bureaucrat with an IOU.
those are just a start but I think a good start
Tax the rich for the same reason that Willy Sutton robbed banks: “’cause that where the money is“.
Taxing the poor is no way to get any money.
Tax the rich. They’ve got billions, not millions, billions.
Taxing the poor will only net the government resentment.
Taxing the rich will net the government some real dough.
The deal to extend the Bush tax cuts for just two years, meanwhile, increased the deficit by $858 billion dollars.
Regardless of what gets cut, the lefty media types are gonna go and find a bunch of someones who have have been ‘hurt’ by the cuts.
Remember how the elders were all going to have to choose between food and medicine because their Social Security payments didn’t increase as much as they thought they would. And this wasn’t even a cut – just less of an increase!
And how about all those folks who are going to be ‘hurt’ if Obamacare isn’t fully enacted.
Sigh. A program that isn’t even fully functioning yet can’t be cut without causing pain.
“Obama is spending trillion dollars a year more than Bush ever did. Republicans should have cut Bush’s spending as well, but this is even worse, with trillion dollar deficits.”
Factoid; spent $4.3 trillion dollars over 8 years, which comes out to about $1.5 billion dollars a day. Obama’s first 100 days saw $3.5 trillion added to the national debt, coming out at $35 billion dollars a day. We as a country cannot afford to continue to spend money like that, it devalues the dollar, meaning what you make won’t buy as much as it did even under Bush jr.
Hey bullwinkle…if you’re going to play with selective stats, then what about the $$ per day excluding the first 100 days?
#45 nobody is “PLAYING” with stats, They speak for themselves, and you can dispute it all ya wanna, But it aint gonna change things now is it Olo Baggins of Bywater…
#45..Now there is some Playing with the stats there at 38, Read up.
While the President is feeding us his line of garbage as to cutting spending, it came to my attention yesterday that the FED is considering a QE3 package as the 1.2 trillion dollars of worthless money they’ve already printed hasn’t done what they though it would. All of the cuts in the world are not going to offset the hyper inflation and the costs that come with printing worthless money. M1 has grown 15.2% in less than 3 months and all of that is unbacked paper!
Not surprising to see ‘great ideas’ in cutting services amounting to rounding errors in defense spending.
How about someone in the GOP grow a pair and put the military on the table? In turn, Obama could use his pair and put SS on the table.
As a result, the sheeple on both ends can hold hands and cry together.
OTOH: we should all keep in mind just how much we all depend on the Military Industrial Complex.
All that military spending – 2 ongoing wars, etc – we aren’t just shoveling money out of the back of airplanes over Iraq and Afghanistan (although that might be a more effective strategy).
We’re spending money building bombs, jet fighters, bombers, missiles, tanks, bullets, etc. All made-in-the-USA jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs!
Than’s over a $trillion every year in “stimulus”. If you cut that, then all those jobs disappear, and hundreds of thousands are out of working and not spending.
This, of course, is the same argument given for the bail-outs for the banks and the car companies.
But we’re all addicted, and we have to stop it, and many people are going to suffer.
except I must say for PeePod. Yes, USA is in a death spiral towards bankruptcy so how can we cut, Cut, CUT==and you all FALL FOR IT like a bunch of sheep.
TAX INCREASES/REVENUE INCREASES is part of any well considered program. 60 days ago a billion tax cut for the rich and now cut, cut, cut? Ha, ha. You dolts can see out of the box constructed by our Corporate Overlords. sheep, Sheep, SHEEP!!!
And kudo to Chris for having a revenue increasing tax that actually increases our FREEEEEDOM!
I’ll suggest another one: increase spending on our Military but start charging foreign countries for our services. If they don’t want to pay – – – well, we have the military. Of course I joke==but why do we provide these services in excess for free?
Oh–and for real====provide universal free healthcare with docs on salary and agressive preventative care WITH DEATH PANELS. It only makes sense. Course absence of that is how we got here.
oh, Oh, OH===reform WallStreet back to the Stone Age. It is only a legal skimming system, a direct tax on all but only for the benefit of the SUPER RICH.
Only the stupid, frail, foreign, and religious fundies will be against these reasonable, rational, pragmatic, eventual changes.
Are we ready TEAM USA???? ((Yea-Sure!))
Dallas, why do you keep imagining that Obama will put SS on the table? You need to realize Obama’s middle name is not Hussein, but justanotherlyingpolitician. He is not going to show any leadership on the issue.
msbpodcast,
Taxing the rich won’t even come close to solving the budget problems. Take every dime that every billionaire in the U.S. has and you wouldn’t come close to eliminating one single year of budget deficits.
Bullwinkle…since 100 days is almost an entirely arbitrary number, what about 137 days? What about 32 days? What about 742 days?
Own up to it: Why did you choose 100 days?
philgar==fail. Is simple math beyond you? Or not even doing the simple math. Who’s ass did you separate from your lips long enough to parrot this nonsense?
Why do you protect “the rich” to your own harm and the harm of your kiddies?
Silly values voting PUKE!—–WAKE the F*ck UP.
Bullwinkle==very arbitrary if not totally contrived and manufactured for the desired result is marking off financial consequences/causation at Presidential terms in office. Good for playing with your own poop, not good for any intelligent analysis.
If we hadn’t implemented all those Bush tax cuts and kept Clinton’s budget we wouldn’t even have this problem.
#52 I disagree. Addressing an issue like SS will require bipartisan effort. Doing it alone is merely handing the election to a scumbag like Mitt Romney whose speech I heard the other day.
He was yapping like a pussy about spending and said nothing. Only drool came out of his pie hole.
They are claiming to cut the deficit by 1.1 trillion over 10 years. Well two years ago, their total debt projection for 2019 was 1.9 trillion dollars LOWER. So even with these cuts, they have managed to increase they are still worse than their own budget of 2 years ago by 800 billion dollars. That’s 800,000 million, 800 million thousand dollars.
How about we cut the ‘loosing trillions of dollars’ program that is so popular at the DOD and various interior departments? Or, even better, how about recovering some of those 10-20 trillion we ‘lost’ over the past few decades and spending it on some much needed infrastructure?
Really, proposing to cut programs while the mega-thieves who ran off with this loot are still free is ridiculous. Start with the theft, then move to the fraud, then cut the waste, and if we still have a budget problem, then cut services. It should be common sense.
Cuts are being made to the graduate student Pell grant program. US Dept. of Education can’t be cut. Who’s going to monitor No Child Left Behind?
Before any cuts are made at home, any and all foreign aid must be cut to $0, then you make an even across the board cut to all sectors of domestic spending.
Since the Federal Government thinks it controls every God Damned thing, they should start charging for the Internet and the air we breath.
continuation of #61
K-12 education is the most obvious example of wasteful decentralization. It comes out an earlier time when influencing the religious content of local schools was more important than preparing people for modern jobs.
Centralizing procurement for books, and similar virtual stuff, would allow absolutely massive orders that would drive down costs to bedrock levels. Imagine someone showing up with an order for say 5M textbooks of a single title. That’s a hell of a lot of bargaining power. The drive to get that huge order would make book companies compete like mad to give a better product. The county by county approach allows books to be drastically overpriced.
Federal education aid to states would consist of finished products showing up at the school door to be used immediately. If a locality chooses to reject the science textbook(written by THE BEST SCIENCE EDUCATORS) in favor of a creationism textbook that would be their right. They would have to provision those books on their own dollar.
Accepting the federal curriculum would mean adhering to actual national standardized tests as measures of learning. Right now the “No Child Left Behind” tests are still implemented individually by the states at standards low enough that they don’t have much problem passing.
This works in other countries, no reason it wouldn’t work here too.
I will conclude with something a little different after a small break…
Who to cut?
1) The military
2) Tax give-aways to the corporations and the rich
3) Out-of-control intelligence units
Who not to cut?
1) The elderly, sick and poor who need every dime.
2) Education.
3) Environment and food safety
4) Healthcare
5) R&D
6) Regulation and oversight of the financial sector.
>> # 50 chuck said, on February 14th, 2011 at 11:30 am
>> We’re spending money building bombs, jet fighters, bombers, missiles, tanks, bullets, etc. All made-in-the-USA jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs!
>> Than’s over a $trillion every year in “stimulus”. If you cut that, then all those jobs disappear, and hundreds of thousands are out of working and not spending.
Spending money on crap that blows up is still a waste.
The same money could be spend on stuff that last _in America_ — bridges, mass transit, green energy, education — creates American jobs _AND_ has a long term pay-off.
But conservatives fight like hell against stuff that actually makes America a better place, even for business.
They only want stuff that blows up.
#64 1873 Colt
For God’s sake be quiet. You’ll give them ideas! 🙂
One thing I think the Reps should do is divide things up and send individual bills up. If a few departments get left out like the department of education that isn’t going to shut the government down now is it?