President Obama unveiled a 10-year budget blueprint Wednesday that calls for nearly $250 billion in new spending on jobs, public works and expanded pre-school education and nearly $800 billion in new taxes, including an extra 94 cents a pack on cigarettes.
But the president’s spending plan would also cut more than $1 trillion from programs across the federal government — for the first time targeting Social Security benefits — in an effort to persuade congressional Republicans to join him in finishing the job of debt reduction they started two years ago.
. . .In his fifth annual budget request to Congress, Obama walks a fine line between reassuring voters anxious about the sluggish economy and facilitating compromise with a GOP that remains fixated on the dangerously high national debt.
Obama’s written message to Congress calls a growing economy the “North Star that guides our efforts.” To that end, his budget seeks $50 billion in new cash for roads and public works, $1 billion for 15 new institutes to promote innovation in manufacturing and $77 billion to make free, public pre-school available to 4-year-olds nationwide.
The cost of those initiatives would be covered through spending cuts and new revenues, including placing a $3 million cap on the value of individual retirement accounts and raising the federal cigarette tax from $1.01 to $1.95 per pack.
Meanwhile, the budget continues Obama’s outreach to Republicans by converting the private debt-reduction offer he has been making for months to GOP leaders into a formal proposal. That package proposes to replace the sequester — $1.2 trillion in deep, automatic spending cuts that took effect March 1 — with $1.8 trillion in alternative policies.
Here's a link to the document.
