President Barack Obama released a $4 trillion budget Monday designed to convince Americans that they can have it all: more tax breaks for the middle class, more spending on government programs, and just enough cuts and tax hikes to keep the nation’s deficits under control.

To pay for it, Obama proposed raising a number of taxes on wealthy taxpayers or businesses — some of them already dismissed as nonstarters by the Republican Congress. They include fees on big banks and taxes on companies that do business overseas — plus spending cuts on health programs and other savings — to cover the costs of all the new initiatives.

Obama isn’t suggesting enough cuts or tax increases to eliminate deficits completely, not to mention the long-term debt. But he’ll make the case to Americans that bringing deficits down to “sustainable” levels — below 3 percent of the nation’s economic output — is good enough to keep the debt manageable, a senior administration official said.

“We can afford to make these investments while remaining fiscally responsible,” Obama said Monday. “We’ve just got to be smarter about paying for our priorities.”

Obama is using the budget to challenge Republicans on middle-class issues, as well as national security funding. He made his budget pitch during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security, where he warned Republicans that they’ll undermine the nation’s security and hurt the federal workers who work at those agencies — including the Border Patrol, airport screeners, law enforcement officials, the Coast Guard and the Secret Service — if they don’t send him a “clean” funding bill that doesn’t try to block his immigration executive actions.

“Don’t jeopardize our national security over this disagreement,” Obama said. “These Americans aren’t just working to keep us safe – they have to take care of their own families. The notion that they would get caught up in a disagreement around policy that has nothing to do with them makes no sense.”

Republicans wasted no time rejecting Obama’s budget. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called it “another top-down, backward-looking document that caters to powerful political bosses on the Left and never balances—ever.” House Speaker John Boehner said it “would impose new taxes and more spending without a responsible plan to honestly address the big challenges facing our country.”

And Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi and House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price, in a joint statement, declared that “a proposal that never balances is not a serious plan for America’s fiscal future.”

The budget calls for $1.091 trillion in discretionary spending for fiscal year 2016, $74 billion above the “sequestration” spending caps that Obama wants to eliminate. The additional spending — $38 billion for defense, $37 billion for domestic programs — would produce a $474 billion deficit for next year.


The only reason some people get lost in thought is because it's unfamiliar territory. - Paul Fix