Obama: $4 trillion budget replaces ‘mindless austerity’

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WASHINGTON — President Obama unveiled a nearly $4 trillion budget that is “designedbring middle economics21st Century” through new programs to be financed by higher taxes on the wealthy.

While unlikely to pass the Republican Congress, the budget calls for new tax credits and other initiatives devoted to education, child care, paid leave, and infrastructure, with tax hikes resulting from the closure of certain loopholes.

The plan includes a $478 billion public works infrastructure program for roads, bridges, and transit systems, to be financed by taxes on overseas earnings. The president also wants to put an end to the automatic across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration.

“I want to work with Congress to replace mindless austerity with smart investments that strengthen America,” Obama said in a speech at the Department of Homeland Security. “I’m not going to accept a budget that locks in sequestration going forward. It would be bad for our security, and bad for our growth.”

Congressional Republicans said the president’s proposals — many of which leaked out in advance of Monday’s announcement — involve too many tax hikes and high-spending programs.

“The president said in his State of the Union that the proposals in his budget would be ‘filled with ideas that are practical, not partisan,’ ” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “Turns out that’s not the case.”

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said Sunday on NBC’s Meet The Press

Modern presidential budget proposals are as much political documents as accounting ones, often declared “dead on arrival” in Congress by opposing political parties. The result has been a series of spending bills funding the government temporarily.

Congress has funded the federal government through the end of the fiscal year in September, with one exception: The Department of Homeland Security. Republicans want to attach conditions on DHS spending that would roll back Obama’s executive actions that would defer low-priority deportations for for immigrants not authorized to be in the United States.

Monday, Obama went to the DHS headquarters to tour its operations center and call on Congress to fund the department attempting to cast his economic proposals as vital to national security. He said thousands of Border Patrol agents, airport security screeners, customs personnel, Coast Guard members, and Secret Service agents won’t get paid if spending authority expires at the end of the month.

“We need to put politics aside, pass a budget that funds our national security priorities at home and abroad and gives middle class families the security they need to get ahead ion the new economy,” Obama said. “This is one of our most basic and most important responsibilities of our government.”

But Republicans said it was Obama playing politics with the budget. “Americans are looking for real solutions, not political stunts,” said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. He said the “acted in strong fashion to pass a bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security and blocks President Obama’s executive overreach, and now it’s the Senate’s turn.”

In a pre-Super Bowl interview Sunday on NBC, Obama said he is hopeful of getting Republican support for many of his proposals. For example, he said both parties agree on infrastructure spending; the dispute is over how to pay for it.

“My job is to present the right ideas,” Obama told NBC, and if the Republicans have better ideas “they should present them.”

Monday’s proposed budget also calls for ending the automatic spending limits known as sequestration, the result of the 2011 stand-off over the debt limit. The plan calls for 7% increases over sequestration limits for national defense and domestic programs, according to the White House.

That includes defense spending of $561 billion, some $38 billion over sequestration levels. Defense priorities include the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, resisting Russian aggression in Ukraine, and a “good governance” project in Central America.

The proposed infrastructure program — $478 billion over six years for roads, bridges and other transit systems — would be financed by a one-time 14% tax on overseas profits, according to the budget.

The projected deficit for Obama’s proposed budget is $474 billion, which officials said is only 2.5% of the gross domestic product.

In his weekend radio address, Obama said his budget is designed to “help working families’ paychecks go farther by treating things like paid leave and child care like the economic priorities that they are. We’ll offer Americans of every age the chance to upgrade their skills so they can earn higher wages.”

The budget proposes to raise tax revenue by closing loopholes on items involving carried interest, capital gains and trust funds.

Recent years have seen a government shutdown, near-shutdowns and a debt limit crisis, ending with the passage of resolutions that fund the government temporarily, as opposed to a specific budget.

Anyone involved in the process “would acknowledge that this is the beginning of a negotiation,” said White House spokesman Josh Earnest. “But it’s important — budgets are important because they’re a way that we can codify our values and our priorities.”

Among the economic plans in the proposed budget:

• An expanded child care tax credit of up to $3,000 a child.

• $750 million for a Department of Education preschool development program, an increase of $500 million.

• More than $3 billion for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.

• A $500 tax credit for “second earners” in working families.

• A $2.2 billion grant program that would encourage states to adopt paid leave programs for employees

• Two years of community college tuition for qualified students, a program that would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

• $1 billion for a “long-term, comprehensive strategy” to develop a Central America “that is fully democratic (and) provides greater economic opportunities.”