WASHINGTON — President Obama, who is proposing his third annual budget tomorrow, will say that it can reduce projected deficits by $1.1 trillion over the next decade, enough to stabilize the nation’s fiscal health and buy time to address its longer-term problems, according to a senior administration official.
Two-thirds of the reductions that Obama will claim are from cuts in domestic spending programs, including many of those he supports. Among the reductions for fiscal 2012 are more than $1 billion from airport grants and nearly $1 billion from grants to states for water treatment plants and similar projects. Public health and forestry programs would also be cut.
Home energy assistance to low-income families and community service block grants would be cut in half, and an initiative to restore the Great Lakes’ environmental health would be reduced by one-quarter.
The administration readily concedes that the president will not win any race to outcut Republicans. In the House, Republicans are trying to slash up to $100 billion in the current fiscal year alone before they begin writing their own proposed budget for 2012 and beyond.
But the administration contends that its plan would leave the country in better overall fiscal health than the path Republicans envision. Even as they seek to downsize domestic programs, they would exempt the Pentagon from budget reductions, make permanent all the Bush-era tax cuts that are to expire at the end of 2012 and repeal cost-saving provisions of the health care law.
Obama would also extend the Bush tax cuts, but not for people whose taxable income is more than $250,000 a year. His budget does not count that proposed change as a savings; in fact, the huge revenue loss from extending the tax cuts for all income below that amount is included in his deficit projections for the remainder of the decade.
By 2015, the senior administration official said, Obama’s budget would show a deficit of just over 3 percent of the gross domestic product, down from three times that level, and at roughly the point that economists consider stable.
— New York Times
Paul wins CPAC straw poll; Romney finishes second WASHINGTON — Representative Ron Paul of Texas won the straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference yesterday while Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, finished second.
Paul got 30 percent, while Romney got 23 percent of the votes of those attending the conference in Washington. Others were grouped far behind.
Gary Johnson, former governor of New Mexico, had 6 percent along with Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey. Newt Gingrich, former House speaker, got 5 percent. Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, and Governor Mitch Daniels of Indiana were at 4 percent.
Sarah Palin, former governor of Alaska, got 3 percent and Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, got 2 percent.
— Associated Press
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