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February 14, 2012 in Nation/World
Obama’s budget proposal suits his campaign
More spending, taxes won’t pass Congress
President Barack Obama on Monday unveiled his $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1.
(Full-size photo)
WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s proposed federal budget is more campaign commercial than governing document.
His $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year starting Oct. 1 – and blueprint for the coming decade – is filled with promises sure to appeal to voters that he wants to win for his re-election in November, such as new spending to hire teachers and tax increases on the wealthy.
Yet it has no chance of passing Congress, where Republicans already have vetoed his calls for more spending and taxes. It offers little prospect of breaking the Washington cycle of lurching from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis with temporary agreements and no consensus on permanent solutions. And it maintains a decade of red ink while putting off until after the election – at the earliest – any detailed proposals to fix long-term problems in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
“It’s not going to be enacted,” said Robert Bixby, executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group that advocates fiscal responsibility. “It’s designed to shape the campaign. There’s a lot of spending for new investments and there’s spending caps in the future so he can claim two things at once.”
Obama unveiled his budget proposal at a community college in Annandale, Va. – a swing state he won in 2008 and is courting heavily this year – where he used the same broad themes he’s used since Labor Day to frame the coming election.
“We’ve got a choice,” he said. “We can settle for a country where a few people do really, really well, and everybody else struggles to get by. Or we can restore an economy where everybody gets a fair shot, everybody does their fair share, everybody plays by the same set of rules – from Washington to Wall Street to Main Street.”
In his budget, he stressed the need for federal spending to help people get a better foothold in a struggling economy. Among his proposals: a $350 billion plan to stimulate the economy, including many specifics that Congress rejected last year.
He also proposed letting tax cuts expire as scheduled on Dec. 31 for those making more than $250,000. That’s unlikely to happen the way he wants, either; Republicans, who control the House of Representatives and can block Senate action, are against it.
He proposes to extend the Bush-era tax cuts permanently for incomes below $250,000. Republicans demand that the tax cuts be extended for higher incomes also. If both sides hold firm, they will let all the tax cuts expire at the end of this year; one likely compromise: They could extend them all, as they did for two years at the end of 2010.
Obama did propose changing a part of Medicare financing that would end one of Washington’s annual stopgap solutions: the need every year to restore full Medicare payments to doctors. Prospects for permanently fixing the problem, caused by an earlier law mandating lower payments, remain uncertain.
The president did not, however, propose specific solutions to the long-term problems in Medicare and Social Security, which will grow worse as the baby boom generation retires and collects benefits.
Even if enacted as proposed, Obama’s budget would spend $901 billion more next year than it took in. That would be the first time in five years that the annual deficit dipped below $1 trillion. And it would clearly fall short of his 2009 pledge to cut the deficit in half by 2013 – to about $650 billion by his own accounting at the time.
Obama used the new budget to portray himself as a deficit hawk, saying he would cut $4 trillion from projected deficits over the next 10 years. However, he and Congress already agreed to $2.1 trillion of that last year when they enacted the Budget Control Act.
Also, he counts as spending cuts $850 billion that would have been spent on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“The administration … is assuming nearly $850 billion in ‘war savings’ that were never going to be spent anyway,” said Bixby.
Over the coming decade, Obama’s budget would include deficits totaling $6.7 trillion. Including interest, they would increase the debt held by the public from $11.6 trillion in fiscal 2012 to $19.5 trillion in fiscal 2022. Debt held by the public was $7.5 trillion when he took office in 2009.
One result of the deficits: The amount of the federal budget devoted to paying interest would jump from 6 percent this year to 14.6 percent in 2022.
Deficits over the coming decade would be lower – totaling about $3.1 trillion – if Congress and Obama did nothing. That’s largely because taxes would go up for everyone as the Bush-era tax cuts expire Dec. 31.
Mitt Romney, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, blasted Obama for refusing to offer specifics on entitlement reform. The former Massachusetts governor has proposed raising the retirement age for Social Security and means-testing benefits for wealthier Americans.
“I believe we can save Social Security and Medicare with a few common-sense reforms, and, unlike President Obama, I’m not afraid to put them on the table,” Romney said.
Obama’s campaign attacked Romney’s proposals.
“Romney’s devastating cuts to Medicare and Social Security won’t sound like common sense to most Americans,” said Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt.
Salmonella linked to chicken handling 
SMARTGUY on February 14 at 1:03 a.m.
Obama will probably get re-elected anyway, the same way all politicians do, by telling the people what they want to hear. This budget is a pipe dream at best. Serious cuts need to be made across the board, along with the tax increases, to even make a dent in our deficit. But America hasn’t got the stomach for it now, so we will pass the buck, at least a few more years, or more likely decades.
Orphan on February 14 at 6:05 a.m.
More campaigning by obama if he really wanted to do something he would have got a budget done 3 years ago. we are coming up on 4 years without a federal budget, simply inexcusable.
DickAdams on February 14 at 6:05 a.m.
“February 14, 2012 in Nation/World
Budget proposal suits campaign”
NUF SAID.
Scoutster on February 14 at 6:28 a.m.
What would be really helpful would be alternative budgets by his rivals.
I’ll go with the most realistic, pragmatic plan, but it would be much better to compare apples vs. apples, instead of governing vs. rhetoric.
Where’s that Paul Ryan plan? WHy don’t we hear about that anymore I wonder.
Charlie on February 14 at 7:47 a.m.
Sen. Harry Reid(D) has said he won’t bring Obamas budget up for a vote on the senate floor, afraid of another crushing vote like last time, 97 to 0.
jdspokanewa on February 14 at 8:03 a.m.
Campaign or further evidence of a dysfunctional government? Just because the GOP and blue dogs will oppose anything appearing as a compromise doesn’t mean the President needs to completely cave every time.
Shouldn’t this “article” appear on the opinion page?
RedCedar on February 14 at 10:49 a.m.
This article reads like an editorial — a recent trend in journalism that I don’t appreciate even though I agree with the opinion in this case. Barack Obama is the best example yet of the fact that our political system is excellent at selecting people who are very good campaigners. Unfortunately being good at campaigning is not usually the same as being good at governing. A good politician would work with the congress he has to get as much possible of what he wanted passed. Compromise is a virtue, not a vice, especially when the need for compromise generally is evidence that the American people are divided on the issue as well.
Obama’s reaction to any frustration with congress, however, is to essentially hold a campaign rally. It’s what he does really well. He’s the best orator I can recall holding the presidency. When campaigning for office, it’s a great thing to get a large crowd of people worked up with enthusiasm and then go out and defeat the supporters of the enemy candidate. Once in office, however, rallying one group of Americans against another is simply destructive. Every president is surely tempted to do it on one occasion or another, but with Obama it’s become his basic style — propose something that a large chunk of congress can’t accept, and then go on the never-ending campaign trail railing against them. It’s getting old.
At this point, we’d all be better off if congress would simply pass some complete budget, any budget. Even if it was nothing better than a continuing resolution formalized into a budget, with no pet programs added or removed, it would at least tell us that the whole lot of them (the House, the Senate, and the President) recognized that they need to pass a budget.
As it is, both sides seem to be putting most of their brain power and that of their very brainy staffers into figuring out ways to box the enemy party into a corner by forcing it to take unpopular votes. It’s all about sneaking poison pills into bills that would otherwise be motherhood and apple pie, and then being able to say, “See! He voted to starve widows and orphans!” or “See! She voted to give your hard-earned money to billionaires!”
A pox on all their houses, I say. Or more likely a plague of syphilis on them since they’re all sleeping together in the same Wall Street whorehouse despite their public declamations to the contrary.
jddavis on February 14 at 10:51 a.m.
The problem is deficit spending without solutions/plans to end it.
Too bad Reid won’t put this out for a Senate vote, too close to the fall elections I’m sure.
gotcha on February 14 at 11:12 a.m.
If Obama can get elected for another term he may be able to double the deficit that he started with… He has a great chance of doubling the price of gas in his first term… I wonder why his policys seem to be poised at killing this country?
DDC on February 14 at 11:48 a.m.
A colossal waste of our time and money (and broadcast air time).
Are we all really this bored?
johnclarke on February 14 at 12:20 p.m.
RedCedar on February 14 at 10:49 a.m.
Compromise is a virtue, not a vice,
Perhaps you could share the Republican compromise to date. You can’t count the payroll tax, since they have not agreed to it yet.
RedCedar on February 14 at 12:53 p.m.
J.C., if this was an article about congress and the income tax, I’d say roughly the same thing — that congressional Republicans are stupidly refusing to consider any income tax increase at all. In the old days, they would have at least given the Democrats a tax increase with one hand, while quietly providing an offsetting loophole with the other. Given that rich people are equal-opportunity employers of congresscritters, most Democrats would be willing to quietly ignore that loophole as well. I’m not sure the new crop of congresscritters is even clever enough for that sort of old-school politicking. They seem to be more single-minded in adamantly sticking to a few essential points. But that’s for the discussion about a different article.
My commentary here is about how Mr. Obama’s reaction to any opposition is to basically hold a campaign rally, which as we have seen is of limited effectiveness in D.C. politics.
dougfresh on February 14 at 1:07 p.m.
Last year Obama proposed $1 in tax increases for every $10 in reduced spending, and repubs refused.
The party of NO strikes again!
We can’t either just cut spending, or just increase taxes to get out of the whole. We need to do BOTH.
johnclarke on February 14 at 1:23 p.m.
RedCedar on February 14 at 12:53 p.m.
J.C., if this was an article about congress and the income tax, I’d say roughly the same thing — that congressional Republicans are stupidly refusing to consider any income tax increase at all.
From the article:
“Yet it has no chance of passing Congress, where Republicans already have vetoed his calls for more spending and taxes”
May I say that I’m delighted to see we agree about something. Unless there is compromise we will continue to flounder, but I guess I saw the article address congress as well. As far as this being a “campaign” issue - so what? This is what Obama has been preaching from day one. What has really changed because this is approaching as election? If Obama has to be in “campaign mode” to point out the Republicans are “stupidly refusing” to address the issue then fine. I don’t care if he’s wearing a cowboy outfit and riding a pony. The Republicans are at the microphone every 3 minutes repeating exactly the same things about “raising taxes on job creators”.
We MUST address revenue. We MUST raise taxes back to sane levels. The country is at 14.5% tax rates vs.GDP and it should be at 20-21%. Why does this simple, basic historical fact escape the light of day ?
johnclarke on February 14 at 1:24 p.m.
excuse me, I meant to say tax revenue, not tax rates.
pmbrown49 on February 14 at 1:30 p.m.
Obama’s budget is built on phantom “savings”. His proposal is really for increased spending.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2017503625_apusbudgetphantomsfactcheck.html
johnclarke on February 14 at 3:24 p.m.
Yes, any budget that “saves” or “redirects” money from the wars that were never paid for from the beginning is a load of crap; it’s still borrowing money to pay.
Benaround on February 15 at 1:11 p.m.
I think it totally disgusting that that Harry Reid’s Senate
hasn’t offered a budget in almost 3 years.
I think it totally illegal that he will refuse to vote on Obama’s budget.He is a very sick man.
Reid is like the Wisconsin and Indiana Democrats…they virtually
leave town and boycott democracy if they don’t get their way.
I would like Harry Reid to go to prison with Jon Corzine and John
Edwards for their criminal behavior.