WASHINGTON — President Obama will offer a plan this week to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term in office, largely by winding down the war in Iraq and raising taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year, an administration official said Saturday.
His federal budget blueprint also proposes to help reduce the deficit by eliminating waste and inefficiency in government, even as the administration launches ambitious and costly policy initiatives such as increasing access to healthcare and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Obama's first budget proposes cutting the $1.3-trillion deficit he inherited when he took office to $533 billion by the end of his first term, bringing it to about 3% of the economy, said the official, who asked not to be named because the budget hasn't been released.
As he begins to sell his plan for reaching that goal, the president will meet with a select group of lawmakers and experts Monday in a summit that the White House says will focus on bringing fiscal responsibility to the process of government. Obama will speak directly to Congress on Tuesday about the state of the country, building toward a presentation of his budget blueprint on Thursday.
Obama's emphasis on fiscal responsibility is a key component of his attempt to sell the budget politically, a hedge against critics as the White House contemplates massive government bailouts of banks and automakers and moves to implement a rescue plan for homeowners.
Republican members of Congress have characterized Obama's stimulus plan as reckless spending, and the administration's intent to raise taxes on higher-income people in the next budget year is likely to draw an outcry.
Even as he talks about the need to stop the collapse of key economic sectors, Obama has repeatedly preached that the recipients of rescue money must act with restraint and responsibility.
On Saturday, the president insisted in his weekly radio and Web address that the government would get its own house in order too. "We can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control," Obama said.
His budget is "sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don't, and restoring fiscal discipline," he said.
