President Obama spoke this morning about his proposed $3.8 trillion spending plan for the coming fiscal year — a budget that projects record deficits — while simultaneously emphasizing the need to rein in spending.
“We simply cannot continue to spend as if deficits don’t have consequences, as if waste doesn’t matter, as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like monopoly money,” Obama said.
Obama pinned much of his budget’s deficit projections on his predecessor, saying that a decade ago the U.S. had a $200 budget surplus but that “over the course of the past 10 years, the previous administration and previous Congresses created an expensive new drug program, passed massive tax cuts for the wealthy and funded two wars without paying for any of them.”
When I first walked through the door, the deficit stood at $1.3 trillion.
The president said that under normal circumstances, he would have moved to begin reducing America’s debt immediately, but that with the economy in “freefall” and the financial system “near collapse,” that was impossible.
Obama said he’s open to hearing budget suggestions from Republicans and Democrats — but only if they mean it.
“What I will not welcome, what I reject, is the same old grandstanding when the cameras are on, and the same irresponsible budget policies when the cameras are off,” the president said.
Obama closed by outlining his fiscal goal this way: “Save what we can, spend what we must and live within our means once again.”
