White House budget director Jack Lew suggested that President Obama will propose hundreds of billions of dollars in spending cuts over the next 10 years, when he presents Congress with his 10 year budget proposal Monday.
“We are reducing programs that are important programs that we care about, and we’re doing what every family does when it sits around its kitchen table: we’re making the choices about what do we need for the future,” Lew said on CNN’s State of the Union.
According to the Associated Press, Obama’s budget proposal would reduce the deficit by over $1 trillion — two thirds of that will come from spending cuts. Four hundred billion of those cuts will come from Obama’s recently proposed spending freeze. Since that freeze does not allow for spending to keep up with inflation, it acts in effect as a reduced spending cap.
Note, the new budget year begins in October, so this proposal won’t really interact with the current spending cut fight on Capitol Hill. But Republicans are already basically rejecting it out of hand. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said Sunday on Fox News that the plan will offer “paltry savings.”
“It looks like to me that it is going to be very small on spending discipline and a lot of new spending so-called investments,” he said.
Brian Beutler
Brian Beutler is TPM's senior congressional reporter. Since 2009, he's led coverage of health care reform, Wall Street reform, taxes, the GOP budget, the government shutdown fight, and the debt limit fight. He can be reached at brian@talkingpointsmemo.com.
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