Obama’s $3.8 Trillion Budget Includes Record Deficit
Spelling out painful priorities, President Barack Obama urged Congress on Monday to quickly approve a huge new shot of spending for recession relief and job creation, part of a record $3.8 trillion budget that would boost the deficit beyond any in the nation’s history while only slowly beginning to put Americans back to work.
If Congress goes along with Obama’s election-year plan, the nation would still end the year with unemployment pushing double digits at 9.8 percent and this year’s pool of government red ink deepening to $1.56 trillion under the administration’s accounting.
The spending blueprint for next year calls for tax cuts for workers and business and more aid for cash-starved state governments as well as the unemployed. The jobs initiative largely mirrors last year’s stimulus bill, but is about one-third its size. The president is asking for nearly $300 billion for recession relief and job stimulus.
The budget paints a remarkably dire picture of a federal government that will have to borrow one-third of what it spends next year as it runs a deficit that still would total some $1.3 trillion.
At the same time, Obama is acutely aware that persistent joblessness is the issue most likely to spell political trouble for Democrats in this year’s midterm elections – and perhaps for his own re-election chances in 2012.
The president’s budget plan sees the deficit coming down by nearly $300 billion next year, and he’s offering more than $1 trillion in deficit reduction proposals over the coming decade.
While proposing increases for immediate needs, he urged lawmakers to follow his lead and make cuts, even painful ones in programs dear to them. “I’m asking Republicans and Democrats alike to take a fresh look at programs they’ve supported in the past to see what’s working and what’s not, and trim back accordingly,” he said.
Obama’s deficit salve mixed nearly $1 trillion in tax increases on higher-income people with $250 billion in savings over a decade from a partial freeze on domestic programs. But popular benefit programs like Medicare would remain untouched.
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![Washington Watch w/Roland Martin, 06.06.10 [Transcript]](http://cdn.newsone.com/files/2009/10/www-roland-set-pic1.jpg)
