Updated
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.
Read the full text of the budget here.
We’ll post full video when available
Wonkbook: Everything you need to know about the Obama budget
Posted by Ezra Klein and Evan Soltas on April 11, 2013 at 8:02 am
Today’s Wonkbook has everything you could possibly want to know about the policies in President Obama’s budget. And then it’s got much, much more than that. Give Evan Soltas a pat on the back next time you see him. It’s a heroic effort.
But the budget — and the way it’s been rolled out — is playing a more subtle purpose, too. It’s meant to help pass gun control and immigration reform.
As Karen Tumulty writes, “For the first time in a while, members of the two parties — at least some of them — appear to be talking about getting things done.” Immigration and gun control really are grinding forward. But as everyone in those negotiations will admit, it’s touch-and-go. The key is to keep members of the two parties talking about getting things done.
The budget could have interrupted that. For the last three years, at least, the annual budget has heralded a period of angry polarization as Republicans mass to assail the president and Democrats counterattack. It’s been a moment for the two parties to recall why they can’t stand each other.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/04/11/wonkbook-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-obama-budget/
Six things Obama’s budget plan reveals about his priorities
President Obama’s $3.78 trillion budget for fiscal 2014 lays out elements of a possible ‘grand bargain’ with Congress. At the same time, it speaks to his policy priorities.
By Mark Trumbull, Staff writer / April 10, 2013
snip
Here’s a tour of Obama’s budget blueprint for the next 10 years, as seen through six central priorities:
1. New deficit reduction: $1.8 trillion.
The fulcrum of Obama’s budget is a $1.8 trillion offer for additional deficit reduction over the next 10 years, beyond some $2.5 trillion in steps Obama and Congress have already taken in the past two years to reduce future deficits (adding up to $4.3 trillion total). Obama first made the offer a few months ago in fiscal talks with House Speaker John Boehner (R) of Ohio, and now it’s an official part of his budget – a move intended to lure Republicans to the bargaining table.
“By including this compromise proposal in the Budget, the President is demonstrating his willingness to make tough choices to find common ground to further reduce the deficit,” the Obama administration says in its budget summary, released Wednesday.
snip
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/DC-Decoder/2013/0410/Six-things-Obama-s-budget-plan-reveals-about-his-priorities
Dang it; if you blinked, you missed it. LOL