WASHINGTON — After a string of costly bailout and stimulus measures, President Obama
will set a goal this week to cut the annual deficit at least in half by
the end of his term, administration officials said. The reduction would
come in large part through Iraq troop withdrawals and higher taxes on
the wealthy.
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Mr. Obama’s budget outline,
which he will release on Thursday, will also confirm his intention to
deliver this year on ambitious campaign promises on health care and
energy policy. The president inherited a deficit for 2009 of
about $1.2 trillion, which will rise to more than $1.5 trillion, given
initial spending from his recently enacted stimulus package.
His budget blueprint for the 2010 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1,
will include a 10-year projection showing the annual deficit declining
to $533 billion in the 2013 fiscal year, the last year of his term,
officials said. While that suggests a two-thirds reduction,
exceeding Mr. Obama’s goal of at least half, advisers note that the
current deficit as a starting point is inflated by one-time expenses to
stimulate the economy. Measured against the size of the
economy, the projected $533 billion shortfall for 2013 would mean a
reduction from a deficit equal to more than 10 percent of the gross
domestic product — larger than any deficit since World War II — to 3
percent, which is the level that economists generally consider
sustainable. Mr. Obama will project deficits at about that level
through 2019, aides said. In his weekly radio and Internet
address on Saturday, Mr. Obama said his first budget was “sober in its
assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my
strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and
restoring fiscal discipline.” “We can’t generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control,” he added. The
president will propose to tax the investment income of hedge fund and
private equity partners at ordinary income tax rates, which are now as
high as 35 percent and could return to 39.6 percent under his plans,
instead of at the capital gains rate, which is 15 percent at most. Senior
Democrats in Congress joined with Republicans in 2007 to oppose that
increase. But with Wall Street discredited and lucrative executive compensation a political target, the provision could prove more popular among lawmakers. Mr.
Obama will also call for letting the Bush tax cuts on income, dividends
and capital gains lapse after 2010 for individuals who make more than
$250,000 a year. But while the top rate for income would rise to 39.6
percent, the top rate for capital gains and dividends would be 20
percent. As a candidate, Mr. Obama called for immediately
repealing those tax cuts. He decided instead to keep them in place
through 2010, as scheduled, reflecting the widespread belief that
raising taxes further depresses economic activity. As for war
costs, Mr. Obama’s campaign projected that withdrawing combat troops
from Iraq would save about $90 billion a year. But it is not clear how
much any savings would be offset by increased spending in Afghanistan,
where Mr. Obama has ordered an additional 17,000 troops, bringing the
total there to 56,000. The budget will provide the first clues to
how Mr. Obama will reassert fiscal discipline after signing into law a
$787 billion economic recovery plan. As difficult as cutting the
deficits will be, much of the reduction by the end of his term will
simply reflect an end to spending from the two-year stimulus package
and — assuming the economy recovers — higher tax revenues and lower
expenditures for safety-net programs like unemployment compensation. Mr. Obama will propose cutting a variety of programs, including the Medicare
Advantage subsidies for insurance companies that cover seniors who can
otherwise acquire health coverage directly from the government. Another
target is spending on private contractors, especially for defense,
which spiked during the Bush administration. And he will scale back
some promises, including his proposal to double money for foreign aid. The
budget on Thursday will come amid a week of reminders of the nation’s
fiscal plight. On Monday Mr. Obama will hold a “fiscal responsibility
summit” at the White House with members of Congress from both parties,
economists, union leaders and business representatives. On Tuesday he
will make a televised address to a joint session of Congress — the
equivalent of a State of the Union speech for a new president — that
advisers said would focus on the economy. Meanwhile, Congress will
debate $410 billion in overdue appropriations for this fiscal year. Yet
Mr. Obama will inflate his challenge by forsaking several gimmicks that
President Bush used to make deficits look smaller. He will include war
costs in the budget; Mr. Bush did not, and instead sought supplemental
money from Congress each year. Mr. Obama also will not count savings
from laws that establish lower Medicare payments for doctors and expand
the alternative minimum tax
to hit more taxpayers — both of which Mr. Bush and Congress routinely
took credit for, while knowing they would later waive the laws to raise
doctors’ payments and limit the reach of the tax. Full details
of Mr. Obama’s budget for the 2010 fiscal year will be released in
April. The outline on Thursday will make clear that he intends to push
ahead on promises to contain health care costs and expand insurance
coverage, and to move toward an energy cap-and-trade system for
controlling emissions of gases blamed for climate change. “The
president believes there are essentially three areas that have to move
forward even as we pare back elsewhere — health care, energy and
education,” said David Axelrod, his senior adviser. “These are the bulwark of a strong economy moving forward.” While
some people have predicted that Mr. Obama would have to shelve his
priorities given rising deficits, his determination to proceed,
especially on health care, reflects his economic advisers’ conviction
that the government cannot control its finances without reforming
health care. The ballooning cost of health care, and thus Medicare and Medicaid, is the biggest factor behind projections of unsustainable deficits in coming decades. “He
wants to present an honest budget, he wants to focus on health care,
and he will cut the deficit by at least half by the end of his first
term,” Peter R. Orszag, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, said in an interview. Mr.
Obama will suggest in his budget that expanding health coverage to the
more than 46 million uninsured can be done without adding to the
deficit, both by making cost-saving changes in the delivery of care and
by raising revenues. Advisers declined to identify the tax source. Changes
to the health care system will require investments in disease
prevention programs, health information technology and research on
cost-effective treatments, among other steps. Some money was included
in the stimulus package. Even so, many health analysts believe big
savings cannot be realized soon. On energy policy, Mr. Obama’s
budget will show new revenues by 2012 from his proposal to require
companies to buy permits from the government for greenhouse gas
emissions above a certain cap. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the permits would raise up to $300 billion a year by 2020. Since
companies would pass their costs on to customers, Mr. Obama would have
the government use most of the revenues for relief to families to
offset higher utility bills and related expenses. The remaining
revenues would cover his proposals for $15 billion a year in spending
and tax incentives to develop alternative energy.
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