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The Washington Post: "Although the budget request offers an important glimpse of the president's priorities - his first since Republicans regained control of the House in November - it is unlikely to have much influence in the budget debate on Capitol Hill. House Republicans plan to offer their own spending proposal for fiscal 2012, after attempting to push through sharp and immediate cuts to spending this year."
“President Obama’s budget will be dramatically different than his previous ones,” The Hill writes. “Liberals are already wincing, and congressional Democrats will oppose many of the president’s demands. Obama’s presidency has reached a watershed. Despite administration denials, it is widely agreed that Republican triumph in November’s election have spurred Obama to march right into centrist territory, especially on fiscal issues. Today’s budget is intended to suggest a business-friendly executive attacking a crippling deficit. Most Democrats backed Obama’s previous budgets. This year, the left will rip him for excessive cuts, while the right will claim he hasn’t gone far enough.”
The New York Times says, “With the budget he is to unveil Monday, President Obama has not opted for the bold, comprehensive approach to reining in the fast-growing federal debt that his own fiscal commission has said is needed, now. That decision partly reflects Mr. Obama’s characteristic caution, but also a White House calculation: that ‘now’ is too soon for the nation’s political system. And that boldness could backfire — wounding not just a president facing re-election next year but also the prospects for bipartisan agreement on the very tax and spending-cut proposals that all sides realize are needed to truly stem the projected red ink in a nation confronting high health care costs and an aging population.”
Politico’s Rogers adds: “After November’s election results, no one assumes this is sufficient, but more than any of Obama’s prior efforts, this budget makes choices that help define the man himself. He bets big on education spending — an 11 percent increase next year — while altering the Pell Grant program to try to save the aid levels now allowed for college students from the poorest families. The National Institutes of Health would grow by about $1 billion, even as old anti-poverty programs and heating assistance would be cut. And $62 billion in Medicare savings would be plowed back into paying physicians who care for the elderly.”
More: "The numbers read less like a budget than a soldier deciding what he must carry and what will weigh him down too much when he jumps into a hot landing zone."
The New York Daily News: “For 2012, the administration sees the imbalance declining to $1.1 trillion, giving the country a record four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.”
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cut, cut, cut.......cut taxes for top earners and they'll create these millions of jobs says teabagger republicans.
Hence, Boehner, we are the JOBS.......conservative economics
President Obama may what to cut the budget, but it will be hard to overcome the Money Handlers such as the Koch Brothers who have said they will invest 88 million to the far left conservatives. That means again the Congress is bought and paid for by big business. They claim they have a plan for cutting the budget, but where are the plans. Lot of hot air is all we hear. We want the plan. Our goavernment is being bought for the rich by the so call conservative party. We the people must show we will vote them out if they don't do the people's bidding. The old saying of Hitler was "Tell the people a lie enough times and they will start to believe it." What the politians beating around the bush rather than giving ideals and working together.
Obama going conservative now that the election is near? Old Iron skillet has a Koch fixation?
What a great day in libbie-land.
Disappointing.
In the aftermath of the debt commission recommendations and owing to the current level of debt and deficit, that is the single word that I would use to describe the President's budget proposal.
I am not entirely optimistic that I will have a better word for the Republican's response proposal for 2012, but for now I would say that the President is starting from a point of weakness in the negotiations.
Additionally, the Republicans are going to propose sigificant cuts to the spending for the remainder of 2011 (thru Sep) and they will be attaching significant spending cut requirements to the bill raising the debt ceiling.
Frankly reducing the deficit by $1.1 Trillion over ten years is just not going to cut it in the process of negotiating a budget with the opposition.
I agree with the President that we need to invest in the future and the infrastructure, but to do that and maintain fiscal sanity at the same time, more drastic and sweeping cuts are going to be required.
The President is the leader of the country and he needs to step up and lead by proposing sweeping changes to the tax codes, reform of social security and medicare and then bring the Republicans to the table to debate those entitlement plan changes and reforms. The political game of waiting for the other side to propose changes so that they can be demagogued, when everyone knows changes are needed, is juvenile and demonstrates a lack of leadership not political savvy.
Defense spending also needs to be addressed to a greater degree than $78 Billion and it is not just turn off the lights in Afgahnistan and the rest of the world and bring people home. The President needs to again lead by bringing forth a plan to reshape the global role of the American military, streamline the defense infrastructure and present it for debate.
President Obama is touted as the President of "all the people" and the time has come "to lead".
I wish him well.
we need to cut every single program 5% across the board !! including SS and medicare !! I guess that is too simple of a way to do it !!
And raise every single tax 5%. By God- we might be able to whip this beast if we combine the two strategies!
DBO,
You don't have to raise taxes by 5%, just cut out all of the deductions that everyone gets, and tax everyone at 11% and you still bring in more money than they did last year with this progressively kill us tax code.
Is this insanity or what? We've busted the bank, will defecit spend $ 1.5 trillion or so this year and OBAMA and his insane bunch of "yes" men actually (with a straight face) will tell us how fiscally sound his budget going forward is! Families who are spending 40% more than they earn need to get hold of the "magic dust" that profit OBAMA is sprinkling around. This is crazy! So he's gonna save $ 1 + trillion over ten years while the defecit goes up another $10 trillion or so. This guy thinks he is speaking to a bunch of mind-numb robots. Americans who actually work and pay taxes are not stupid enough to believe that OBAMA's policies and budget, and the words "fiscal sanity", belong on the same page. If all this defecit spending that got us into this $ 14 trillion hole would have actually work, we would have a $ 14 trillion surplus. This idiots budget is financial destruction on steroids!