President Obama will announce Monday that he plans to cut the nation’s projected annual deficit in half by the end of his first term, a senior administration official said Saturday.
The plan will make explicit what Obama officials have been suggesting for months: Contrary to his campaign promise, Obama will allow the Bush tax cuts on the wealthiest Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010 instead of seeking their repeal sooner. Officials determined that seeking to raise the taxes earlier during a recession was a bad idea, advisers said.
Obama, who will speak Monday to a Fiscal Responsibility Summit at the White House, also will outline steps he is taking to eliminate what his staff calls “accounting gimmicks” used by previous administrations.
“This budget actually is going to assume that there will be a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, flood or manmade disaster in the United States in fiscal year 2010, and each year going forward 10 years,” the official said. “The Bush budget never assumed that.”
Under White House projections, this year’s inherited budget deficit of $1.3 trillion will be cut to $533 billion by fiscal year 2013, the end of the first term.
“So we’ll cut it at least in half,” the official said.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
