Obama: Budget talks need to find compromise
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U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday that lawmakers on both sides need to find a compromise on reducing spending.
"Everybody's going to have to give a little bit," said the president at a White House press conference when citing his fiscal year 2012 budget proposal, which was sent to the Congress on Monday.
In the budget blueprint presented by the Obama administration, the government will cut the deficit by 1.1 trillion dollars over the next 10 years. In 2012, Obama plans to trim 90 billion dollars from government spending, while dramatically boosting tax revenues.
But the Republicans are not satisfied with the Obama administration's budget reduction plan.
"The President's budget spends too much, taxes too much, and borrows too much -- shifting job growth today and leaving our children with a diminished future," Paul Ryan, Chairman of the House Committee on the Budget said in a statement in response to the release of Obama's budget.
The Republicans also criticized that Obama's deficit cut plan is far more modest than that detailed by his fiscal commission, which in December proposed measures that would mop up four times as much red ink.
The Obama budget does not address structural changes in Social Security or Medicare, the two largest items in the federal budget.
"In our nation's most pressing fiscal challenges, the president has abdicated his leadership role," said Paul Ryan. "When his own commission put forward a set of fundamental entitlement and tax reforms ... he ignored them."
"We have consistently said it's not our intention to shut down this government," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, said Monday of one possibility should there be an impasse. "That's political talk and we ought to get that off the table and we ought to go about the real business of trying to cut spending."
U.S. federal deficit in fiscal year 2011 is expected to top historic high level of 1.645 trillion dollars, which would equal an unsustainable 10.9 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), the basic measure of a country's overall economic output.
The budget projects that the budget red ink in 2012 will fall to 1.101 trillion dollars. But it will remain the fourth year in a row that the U.S. fiscal deficit surpasses 1-trillion-dollar mark.
In 2010, the U.S. budget deficit hit 1.29 trillion dollars after it recorded 1.42 trillion dollars in 2009.
Fears are growing that the inability of the United States to get its budget under control could eventually lead to a debt crisis.
But Obama argued that the country should invest in its future, which means that the spending on energy, education and innovation among other issues should not be trimmed.
He insisted that his budget puts the country on a path to live within its means so it can invest in its future.
He noted that the 2012 budget was a "downpayment" on what was needed to get the United States on a strong fiscal path, saying Democrats and Republicans must work together to do more.
"There's going to be a lot of ups and downs in the coming months as we get to that solution," the president said. "I'm confident that we can get this done."
