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Obama makes sales pitch for his 2012 US budget
[Arab News] President Barack B.O. Obama made a sales pitch on Saturday for his forthcoming fiscal year 2012 budget, pledging that it would help the United States "live within our means while investing in our future."

The budget, to be unveiled on Monday, contains a mix of cost cuts and targeted spending aimed at achieving Obama's twin goals of reducing the deficit and boosting US competitiveness.

But Republicans, who control the House of Representatives, have balked at any spending increases and accused the Democratic president of not being serious about reining in the deficit, which is forecast to reach $1.48 trillion this fiscal year.
But he feels he's being serious. Surely that counts for something?
The 2012 fiscal year begins on Oct. 1.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama highlighted his plan to freeze non-security discretionary spending for five years, which the White House says will reduce the deficit by $400 billion over the next 10 years.
Forty billion per year sounds like a lot, but President Obama's proposed budget is $3.8 trillion.... and then there is the $1.48 trillion deficit he already ran up.
"We've stripped down the budget by getting rid of waste," he said in the address, adding that the government would get rid of thousands of empty buildings and freeze salaries on "hard-working government employees" as part of the push.
Adding to the real estate glut. Smart! And freezing already-bloated salaries should help a lot. Where does he get these ideas?
The man is brilliant, he can't help himself. Did you hear he has an IQ of 125 and went to Harvard?
Obama said the budget proposes to invest in roads, high-speed trains, broadband Internet, clean energy and education. After a decade of rising deficits, Obama said, "I'm proposing a new budget that will help us live within our means while investing in our future."
Cutting the official budget by 4% is not what living within our means looks like. Spending no more than we take in is living within our means. Spending less, so that we have something to invest with... sorry, I got carried away.
Republicans, who have a sales pitch of their own to make, said Obama's budget was not taking the deficit problem seriously enough.

"The president's proposal for a freeze in government spending might give the White House a nice talking point. But it is a totally inadequate solution to our nation's spending problems," Senator Orrin Hatch, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, said in his party's weekly address.

"If the president's new budget simply freezes his last budget, he'll stifle job growth by continuing to spend too much, tax too much, and borrow too much."

While Obama's budget proposal looks to next year, Congress is still struggling to pass legislation to run the government for the rest of this fiscal year that ends on Sept. 30.

House Republicans on Friday unveiled a plan that would impose immediate cuts of roughly 25 percent on the government's nonmilitary operations, setting up a brawl with Obama and the Democratic-led Senate that could lead to a government shutdown.

"Republicans are focused on creating a better environment for economic growth and job creation," House Speaker John It is not pronounced 'Boner!' Boehner
... the occasionally weepy leader of House Republicans...
 said of the spending cuts to be debated next week on the House floor. "To do that, we need to liberate our economy from the shackles of out-of-control spending and big government."
Posted by: Fred 2011-02-13
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=315963