Obama To Unveil New Budget
CBS
Transcript
president obama will unveil an ambitious first budget to the american people this week he intends to slash the nation's record trillion dollar plus deficit by more than half by the end of his first term it will require doing all we can to get exploding deficits under control he inherited a tab of roughly 1.2 trillion dollars mr obama wants to cut that to 533 billion by 2013. he intends to do this in the second two years of his presidency after record planned spending in his first two years stand by for some painful math he's already signed the largest economic stimulus package ever 787 billion dollars and his treasury secretary unveiled a bank bailout package worth 350 billion dollars add that to the current deficit and that's a lot of red ink especially when he also plans to announce major spending on health care and energy before congress this week some economists are skeptical cutting the deficit in half by 2013 is a pipe dream the stimulus package is not very efficient so it won't create nearly as many jobs as he anticipates consequently in 2010 we'll have another stimulus package to get the job done the deficit will remain out of control for the remainder of his presidency the president says he'll raise the money by raising taxes on businesses and the wealthy anyone earning more than a quarter million dollars and he'll lower spending on the iraq war by an estimated 90 billion dollars a year by drawing down troops but he's adding troops to afghanistan the markets have reacted badly to previous white house announcements they're down 11 percent since mr obama took office and americans have followed suit with limited consumer spending all but closing their wallets what the president desperately needs to do is show the markets and show citizens that he knows what he's doing that even though they're not going to see exactly what road he's taking that he's pointed the right direction he starts by meeting experts and members of congress here tomorrow at a fiscal responsibility summit it's a chance for him to explain to them his plans in private before taking them to the american public russ kimberly dozier at the white house thank you very much