Budget targets rich-poor gap
Obama’s 2015 plan has little hope of passing
WASHINGTON — Looking past the deficit battles and financial crises of years past, President Barack Obama put forward a $3.9 trillion budget proposal Tuesday that set out a wish list of programs on education, infrastructure, job training and urban revitalization, adding policy details to his rhetorical promises to bridge the gap between rich and poor.
Like any president’s annual budget blueprint, Obama’s stands no chance of being adopted as is by Congress. This year, the prospects are even dimmer since Congress recently approved a two-year spending deal after years of ugly budget fights and there is little interest in reopening the debate.
Still, the plan, with its list of domestic initiatives, will serve as a campaign-ready agenda for Democrats wanting to draw contrasts with Republicans in midterm election year.
Moreover, the budget provides insight into the ideological leanings of a second-term president no longer constrained by reelection concerns, the burdens of a recession and the subsequent focus on deficits.
The plan shows Obama, even in aspirational mode, seeking a liberal but pragmatic agenda. His budget includes adjustments in existing programs — a tweak here, an expansion there — but no grand new designs. Its spending levels just barely exceed caps set by the recent bipartisan budget deal and makes cuts and consolidations to get there. Discretionary spending — money not automatically allocated by entitlement programs — stands at roughly the same level Obama proposed last year.
“Our budget is about choices. It’s about our values,” Obama said Tuesday as he promoted his spending plan at a local elementary school.
Republicans blasted the proposal as a fantasy.
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said the plan was “a campaign brochure.”
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A year ago, Obama used his budget to try to draw Republicans into negotiations on a large-scale deal to cut the long-term federal deficit.
This year, with the deficit declining, such enticements were largely missing. Most notably, Obama dropped a proposal aimed at slowing the growth of Social Security payments by changing how cost-of-living increases are calculated.
Obama’s current plan would cut the deficit by adjusting the way the government means-tests Medicare, providing higher pre- miums for some wealthy seniors.
He would include measures to force down the cost of prescription drugs, which also reduces federal spending, and would count on the deficit-reducing impact of his proposed immigration reform measure.
He proposed paying for new spending — a $55 billion “Opportunity, Growth and Security Initiative” — by closing tax loopholes used primarily by the wealthy and raising tobacco taxes. Among the tax provisions he would eliminate is the carried-interest rule, which allows some hedge fund managers to pay a lower tax rate on a significant share of their income.
Republican opponents focused largely on Obama’s strategies for boosting incomes for the working poor — setting up an electionyear showdown over how the parties address the public’s increasing worries about the income gap.
Obama would expand the earned income tax credit, which supplements wages for low- income workers. His plan would focus on childless workers, who currently get minimal benefit from the longstanding tax credit, broadening their eligibility and doubling the maximum they could receive to $1,000.
Republicans, whose party once embraced the tax credit, have since labeled it a failed policy.