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White House: Obama to lay out spending plan
By LAURIE KELLMAN, Associated Press
Sun Apr 10, 11:50 am ET

WASHINGTON – President Obama will lay out new plans this week to reduce the federal deficit in part by seeking cuts to government programs for seniors and the poor, a top political adviser said Sunday, adding that Americans expect both sides to work together.
"You're going to have to look at Medicare and Medicaid and see what kind of savings you can get," Obama adviser David Plouffe said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
The presidential speech will come during a week in which official Washington pivots from a painful standoff over this year's budget to next year's and beyond, focusing on competing plans to shore up the nation's fiscal health in the long term.
At the top of the week, congressional aides are expected to put to paper the 2011 spending deal struck Friday night, an hour before the government would have begun to shut down. Both houses of Congress were expected to take up that measure at midweek. Next up is the much more complex fight over the election-year budget in 2012. Other, related questions loom, such as whether to raise the nation's debt ceiling.
It's all part of a broader debate over how the government provides for the nation's neediest while strengthening the economy. What's usually a debate about federal spending had shifted into talks about where to cut, and both parties took aim at the chief federal health programs for the elderly and the poor, Medicare and Medicaid.......................>>>>................................>>>>........................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r00100&AppName=1

Obama to Put Taxes on Table in Spending Plan

Published April 11, 2011

| The Wall Street Journal

April 8: President Obama poses for photographers in the Blue Room at the White House in Washington after he spoke regarding the budget and averted government shutdown after a deal was made between Republican and Democrat lawmakers.

AP

April 8: President Obama poses for photographers in the Blue Room at the White House in Washington after he spoke regarding the budget and averted government shutdown after a deal was made between Republican and Democrat lawmakers.

President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for reducing the nation's deficit Wednesday, belatedly entering a fight over the nation's long-term financial future. But in addition to suggesting cuts—the current focus of debate—the White House looks set to aim its firepower on a more divisive topic: taxes.

In a speech Wednesday, Mr. Obama will propose cuts to entitlement programs, including Medicare and Medicaid, and changes to Social Security, a discussion he has largely left to Democrats and Republicans in Congress. He also will call for tax increases for people making over $250,000 a year, a proposal contained in his 2012 budget, and changing parts of the tax code he thinks benefit the wealthy.

"Every corner of the federal government has to be looked at here," David Plouffe, a senior White House adviser, said Sunday in one of multiple television appearances. "Revenues are going to have to be part of this," he said, referring to tax increases.

Until now, Mr. Obama has been largely absent from the raging debate over the long-term deficit. The White House has done little with the recommendations of its own bipartisan deficit commission. And Mr. Obama's 2012 budget didn't offer many new ideas for tackling entitlement spending, among the biggest long-term drains on the federal budget.

The president stayed out of the long-term deficit debate in an apparent effort to see whether Republicans would move first in offering long-term deficit-reduction ideas—something House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan did with an ambitious plan last week to trim spending now and in the future.

The White House move caught Democrats in Congress off guard, according to aides, and details of the president's proposals were sketchy. Mr. Plouffe said the president will name a dollar amount for deficit reduction, although the White House wouldn't provide specifics. Introducing taxes into the discussion has the potential to complicate the resolution of coming budget fights, specifically the need to raise the debt ceiling, a move needed to prevent the U.S. defaulting on its debt.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/04/11/obama-taxes-table-spending-plan/#ixzz1JDbvhiRC

US deficit up 15.7% in first half of fiscal 2011
WASHINGTON — The US budget deficit shot up 15.7 percent in the first six months of fiscal 2011, the Treasury Department said Wednesday as political knives were being sharpened for a new budget battle.

The Treasury reported a deficit of $829 billion for the October-March period, compared with $717 billion a year earlier, as revenue rose a sluggish 6.9 percent as the economic recovery slowly gained pace.

The Treasury argued that the pace of increase in the deficit was deceptive because of large one-off reductions in expenditures made during the first half of fiscal 2010, compared with previous and subsequent periods.

Those included a $115 billion reduction in funds spent on the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) -- the financial institution bailout program -- in March 2010.

But 2011 so far has also seen significant increases in spending on defense, Social Security, health and debt service, while receipts have not grown as fast.

"The jump in outlays mostly owed to a smaller estimated reduction in TARP outlays this year versus 2010," said Theresa Chen at Barclays Capital Research.

However, she said, the trend shows that taxable income is rising at a 6.9 percent annual pace, and individual incomes taxes are up 20.6 percent, "consistent with general economic improvement."

The figures came amid a sharp, politically partisan battle in Washington over cutting spending and raising taxes, with President Barack Obama preparing Wednesday to release his plan for reducing the long-term deficit.

He also faces a looming battle over increasing the country's official debt ceiling, so that the government can continue to borrow to finance the deficit.