Lots of number flowing from the Office of Management and Budget today as the President submits the 2011 budget. Since it's the news-of-the-day, we might as well be primed. So, here's some background and perspective courtesy of the traditional media. The Washington Post leads with the budget's total and its goals:
The $3.8 trillion budget blueprint President Obama plans to submit to Congress on Monday calls for billions of dollars in new spending to combat persistently high unemployment and bolster a battered middle class. But it also would slash funding for hundreds of programs and raise taxes on banks and the wealthy to help rein in soaring budget deficits.The New York Times, however, leads with the deficit:
To put people back to work, Obama proposes to spend about $100 billion immediately on a jobs bill that would include tax cuts for small businesses, social-safety-net programs, and aid to state and local governments. To reduce deficits, he would impose new fees on some of the nation's largest banks and permit a range of tax cuts to expire for families earning more than $250,000 a year, in addition to freezing non-security spending for three years.
The deficit for the current fiscal year will reach nearly $1.6 trillion, a new post-World War II high, with the addition of about $100 billion in additional tax cuts and public works spending that President Obama has proposed to spur job creation, according to the administration.We are slowly crawling out of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. But, watch Republicans start railing against the deficit and the national debt, as if they played no role in it. They did.
But that will be the peak, officials say. The new budget that Mr. Obama is proposing on Monday for fiscal year 2011, which begins in October, will put the government on a “smooth glide path” to lower annual deficits over the next decade, according to his budget director, Peter R. Orszag.
