‘Tough choices’ in budget

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

Today, President Barack Obama will send Congress a $3 trillion-plus budget for 2012 that promises $1.1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade by freezing many domestic programs for five years, trimming military spending and limiting tax deductions for the wealthy.

Jacob Lew, the president’s budget director, said Sunday that the new spending plan for 2012 would disprove the notion that “we can do this painlessly ... we are going to make tough choices.”

Republicans rejected that appraisal, castigating Obama for proposals that will boost spending in such areas as education, public works and research, and charging that Obama’s cuts are not deep enough.

“He’s going to present a budget ... that will continue to destroy jobs by spending too much, borrowing too much and taxing too much,” House Speaker John Boehner said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Lew, appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” rejected criticism that the $1.1 trillion deficit-cutting goal fell far short of the $4 trillion in deficit cuts outlined by the president’s own deficit commission in a plan unveiled last December. That proposal would attack the biggest causes of the deficits — spending on the benefit programs Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — and defense spending.

Obama’s budget avoided painful choices put forward by the commission on benefit programs. Lew said it’d be a mistake to say the report did not have an impact on Obama’s proposals.

The administration is reviving a proposal Congress rejected last year to limit tax deductions the wealthy can get for charitable donations, mortgage-interest payments and state and local taxes, and using those savings to pay for keeping the Alternative Minimum Tax from hitting more middle-class families over the next two years.

The administration has said that its five-year freeze will save $400 billion over the next decade with many programs slated for even bigger cuts. The government’s program to help low-income people pay their heating bills would be cut in half for a savings of $2.5 billion, and a Great Lakes environmental restoration program would but cut by 25 percent to save $125 million, according to an Office of Management and Budget summary.

That document also said that the budget would cut the Pentagon’s spending plans over the next decade by $78 billion with reductions in various weapons programs deemed unnecessary.