Obama's first budget aims to halve deficit

[Guest guest]

Watch Democrats say "See! Told you Obama was good for something."

Well DUH! It's easy to halve the BUDGET deficit if you put all the stuff you'd normally spend in the budget into an $800 billion dollar spending bill which has nothing to do with the budget.

And look how he wants to do it:

"President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said."

The taxes on our corportations are the highest in the world and are one of the main reasons we are in this crisis, and now Obama wants to make them pay more taxes.

Then he wants to short the troops what they need to execute the war properly even though they are under -manned and under-armed to begin with. I hope the Dems will enjoy all those additional bodies coming home in the next couple of years.

It also says:

"His budget proposal takes aim at the short-term problem, administration officials said, but also would begin to address the nation's chronic budget imbalance by squeezing savings from the federal health programs for the elderly and the poor."

So all you idiotic saps out there who bought into the spiel about everyone being covered ought to kick yourselves for voting him into office.

Perhaps the dumbest part of it is this:

"Making policy changes in those programs - such as rewarding physicians who computerize their medical records or paying doctors for results rather than procedures - could improve care while generating long-term savings, experts say. "

Doctors cannot guarantee results. Most patients with chronic ills do not get better. They die. If you pay a doctor less because nature takes its course, you won't have too many people doctoring anymore will you?

Read the stuff in RED please.

Administrator

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/02/21/MNL2162BJ1.DTL & type=politics

Obama's first budget aims to halve deficit

President Obama is putting the finishing touches on an ambitious first budget that seeks to cut the federal deficit in half over the next four years, primarily by raising taxes on business and the wealthy and by slashing spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, administration officials said.

In addition to tackling a deficit swollen by the $787 billion stimulus package and other efforts to ease the nation's economic crisis, the budget blueprint will press aggressively for progress on the domestic agenda Obama outlined during the presidential campaign. This would include key changes to environmental policies and a major expansion of health coverage that Obama hopes to enact later this year.

A summary of Obama's budget request for the fiscal year that begins in October will be delivered to Congress on Thursday, with the complete document - hundreds of pages long - to follow in April. But Obama plans to unveil his goals for scaling back record deficits and rebuilding the nation's costly and inefficient health care system Monday, when he addresses more than 100 lawmakers and budget experts at a White House summit on restoring fiscal responsibility to Washington.

In his weekly radio and Internet address Saturday, Obama expressed determination to "get exploding deficits under control" and said his budget request is "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline."

Obama faces the long-term challenge of retirement and health programs that threaten to bankrupt the government years down the road, as well as the more immediate problem of deficits bloated by spending on the economy and financial-system bailouts. His budget proposal takes aim at the short-term problem, administration officials said, but also would begin to address the nation's chronic budget imbalance by squeezing savings from the federal health programs for the elderly and the poor.

Even before Congress approved the stimulus package earlier this month, this year's deficit was projected by congressional budget analysts to approach $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of the overall economy, the highest since World War II. With the stimulus and other expenses, some analysts say the annual gap between federal spending and income could approach $2 trillion when the fiscal year ends in September.

Obama proposes dramatically reducing those numbers by the end of his first term, cutting the deficit he inherited in half, said administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. His budget plan would keep the deficit hovering near $1 trillion in 2010 and 2011, but shows it dropping to $533 billion in 2013 - still high in dollar terms, but a more manageable 3 percent of the overall economy.

To get there, Obama proposes cutting spending and raising taxes. The savings would come primarily from "winding down the war" in Iraq, a senior administration official said.

Obama also seeks to increase tax collections, primarily by making good on his promise to eliminate the temporary tax cuts enacted in 2001 and 2003 for wealthy taxpayers, whom Obama defined during the campaign as those earning more than $250,000 a year. Those tax breaks would be permitted to expire on schedule for the 2011 tax year, when the top tax rate would rise from 35 percent to more than 39 percent.

Obama also wants to maintain the tax on estates worth more than $3.5 million, instead of letting it expire next year. And he proposes "a fairly aggressive effort on tax enforcement" that would target tax havens and corporate loopholes, among other provisions, the official said.

Republicans, who are already painting Obama as a profligate spender, are laying plans to attack him on taxes as well. Even some nonpartisan observers question the wisdom of announcing a plan to raise taxes in the midst of a recession. But senior White House adviser Axelrod said in an interview that the tax proposals reflect the ideas that won the election last fall.

"This is consistent with what the president talked about throughout the campaign," and "restores some balance to the tax code in a way that protects the middle class," Axelrod said. "Most Americans will come out very well here."

The budget also puts in place the building blocks of what administration officials say will be a broad restructuring of the U.S. health system, an effort aimed at covering some of the 46 million Americans who lack insurance while controlling costs and improving quality. Many lawmakers said they had expected a health care overhaul to be pushed off while Obama deals with the economic crisis, but administration officials stressed they intend to forge ahead with comprehensive reform.

Administration officials and outside experts say the most likely path to revamping the health system is to begin with Medicare, the federal program for retirees and people with disabilities, and Medicaid, which serves the poor. Together, the two programs cover about 100 million people at a cost of $561 billion in 2007. Making policy changes in those programs - such as rewarding physicians who computerize their medical records or paying doctors for results rather than procedures - could improve care while generating long-term savings, experts say. It also could prod private insurers to follow suit.

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle