Obama unveils record budget
Tax hikes would total $2.8 trillion
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Tuesday unveiled a record $4.1 trillion, election-year budget that finances Democratic priorities like education, health care and climate change with new taxes on crude oil, the wealthy and big banks.
The progressive wish list, which comes as the nation’s long-term fiscal outlook is deteriorating, underscores the initiatives pushed by Democratic candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, who hope to succeed Obama. Republica ns dismissed the proposal as a tax-andspend exercise.
Obama called the budget — his eighth and final one — “a roadmap to a future that embodies America’s values and aspirations: a future of opportunity and security for all of our families; a rising standard of living; and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids.”
The budget was unveiled on the same day as the New Hampshire presidential primary, with much of the focus on the political fight over Obama’s successor.
The budget calls for a major new tax on crude oil that would raise the price of gasoline, currently averaging about $1.80 a gallon nationwide, by about 24 cents.
All told, its tax hikes would average more than a quarter-trillion dollars a year to cover deficits made worse by a softening economic picture. The $2.8 trillion net tax hike package would almost double the tax increases Obama sought — and was denied — last year.
GOP leaders have already said they will ignore the budget proposal rather than engage in another round of brinkmanship with the president. In an unusual move, they broke with four decades of tradition and declined to invite Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan to give what has become customary testimony on the spending proposal.
“This isn’t even a budget so much as it is a progressive manual for growing the federal government at the expense of hardworking Americans,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
As in past years, Obama’s budget largely leaves alone huge benefit programs like Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and food stamps, whose spiraling growth is the main driver of budget deficits that economists say could drag down the economy unless policymakers step in.
The Obama plan sees the def icit rising from $438 billion last year to more than $500 billion for the 2017 budget year that starts Oct. 1. Deficits over the coming decade would total $6 trillion.
Obama and his GOP rivals long ago gave up on efforts to find sweeping bipartisan solutions to the government’s eroding fiscal picture. An Obama proposal to curb the inflation increases for Social Securit y benef icia r ies , seen as an overture to Republicans, was shelved years ago.
Washington’s nonpartisan budget scolds were unimpressed.
“The president once promised not to leave our fiscal problems for future generations to solve, but in this budget, that is exactly what he does,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.