GOP pans Obama's $3.9T budget

Copies of President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal 2015 budget are set out for distribution by Senate Budget Committee Clerk Adam Kamp on Capitol Hill.
Copies of President Barack Obama's proposed fiscal 2015 budget are set out for distribution by Senate Budget Committee Clerk Adam Kamp on Capitol Hill.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Republicans are dismissing President Barack Obama's new $3.9 trillion budget as nothing more than a Democratic manifesto for this fall's congressional campaigns, but the fiscal plan is taking hits from another quarter too - anti-deficit groups.

Obama on Tuesday sent lawmakers a 2015 budget top-heavy with provisions that have little chance of becoming law. They included $1 trillion in tax increases - mostly on the rich and corporations - and a collection of populist but mostly modest spending boosts for consumer protection, climate change research and improved technology in schools.

It even trumpeted $2.2 trillion in 10-year deficit reduction, though most of the proposed savings, including fresh tax boosts plus cuts in government payments to Medicare providers, seemed long shots to make it through Congress. Almost one-third came from claiming savings from the end of U.S. fighting in Iraq and troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

That meant the budget's clearest impact was political: feeding Democrats' election-year narrative that they are trying to help narrow the income gap between rich and poor while creating jobs. Republicans, who see tax cuts as the surest way to help the economy, pounced.

"Instead of looking for more ways to preserve and strengthen our entitlements, the President has abandoned the one proposal he suggested in last year's budget," said House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., at a hearing with White House Budget chief Sylvia Mathews Burwell. Ryan was referring to the White House's move to pull back on a proposal to curb the growth of Social Security cost of living increases. "So I'm disappointed to say that 2014 is shaping up to be yet another missed opportunity."

Obama and his Democratic allies saw things differently.

"It's a road map for creating jobs with good wages and expanding opportunity for all Americans," the president said while visiting an elementary school in the nation's capital. He added that his plan would help curb budget deficits with higher taxes on the wealthy and other savings, "not by putting the burden on folks who can least afford it."

After four years of record-setting annual deficits that each exceeded $1 trillion, the budget gap dropped to $680 billion in 2013 and could continue downward. Obama's budget projects shortfalls of $649 billion this year and $564 billion in 2015.

A bipartisan compromise curbing agency spending for the next two years, combined with the usual election-year pressures to avoid politically risky steps, has further diluted lawmakers' desires to tackle the problem.

But Washington groups that press to control budget shortfalls argue that the government's long-term fiscal problem remains.

They argue that retiring baby boomers and ever-rising health costs threaten to swamp revenues in the long run, running federal debt to levels that are hard to sustain without risking economic problems. Even with Obama's proposed savings, the government would still run up $4.9 trillion more in debt over the coming decade, on top of more than $14 trillion it already owes.

"The longer we wait, the more painful the changes will be," said Maya MacGuineas, a leader of the bipartisan Fix the Debt Campaign. "We can't let election-year malaise be an excuse for inaction on such an important issue."

"Stabilizing the debt over the long term is a key part of any sound fiscal policy and viable economic strategy for America," said Michael A. Peterson, president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation.