WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.9 trillion budget Tuesday that would funnel money into road building, education and other economy-bolstering programs, handing Democrats a playbook for their election-year themes of creating jobs and narrowing the income gap between rich and poor.
The blueprint for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, is laden with populist proposals designed to fortify those goals. It includes new spending for pre-school education and job training, expanded tax credits for 13.5 million low-income workers without children and more than $1 trillion in higher taxes over the next decade, mostly for the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
"As a country, we've got to make a decision if we're going to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans or if we're going to make smart investments necessary to create jobs and grow our economy and expand opportunity for every American," Obama told students at an elementary school in the nation's capital.
With an eye in part on job creation, $302 billion would be spent to upgrade roads, railroads and mass transit, with more money aimed at improvements at Veterans Affairs hospitals and national parks. Additional funds would be aimed at clean energy research, creating 45 public-private manufacturing institutes for spurring innovation and training workers whose companies have closed or moved.
To help pay for those initiatives and others and trim federal deficits as well, Obama relies in part on higher revenue.
He would raise $651 billion by limiting tax deductions for the nation's highest earners and with a "Buffett tax" - named for billionaire Warren Buffett - slapping minimum levies on the highest-earning people. Taxes would also be raised on large estates, financial institutions, tobacco products, airline passengers and managers of private investment funds.
Congress has ignored those revenue proposals and many of Obama's spending ideas before. With the entire House and one-third of the Senate facing re-election in November, campaign-year pressures and gridlock between the Democratic-led Senate and Republican dominated House all but ensure that few of the president's initiatives will go far.
"The president has offered perhaps his most irresponsible budget yet," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, who has participated in two failed rounds of deficit-reduction talks with Obama since 2011. "American families looking for jobs and opportunity will find only more government in this plan."
"The president's budget is yet another disappointment because it reinforces the status quo," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis. "It would demand that families pay more so Washington can spend more."
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