Obama to set out budget plan on Wednesday
Washington is still regrouping from the political jousting that led to the near shutdown of the federal government at the weekend, but looming on the horizon are even bigger battles over the debt ceiling and the 2012 budget.
Opposition Republicans put pressure on Obama in the long-term budget debate by unveiling a spending blueprint last week that would cut government expenditures by $6 trillion over the
next decade.
Republicans want to slash funds for Medicare, benefits for the elderly, and Medicaid, a health programme for people with low income, but Democrats would prefer to make up much of the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy.
Right at the heart of this ideological debate is the broad disagreement between Democrats and Republicans over the size and scope of the government's role in American life.
White House aide Dan Pfeiffer said Obama would lay out his own vision on Wednesday, while other presidential aides attacked the Republican policy paper outlined on Tuesday by House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.
"The average millionaire in this country would get at least a $200,000 tax cut while the average senior down the road is going to pay $6,000 more in health costs, the middle-class is going to pay more, you've got a 70 percent cut in energy investment at a time of record gas prices," said senior White House adviser David Plouffe.
The president, by contrast, would take "a scalpel, not a machete" to the social welfare programmes and look to rein in the deficit "in a balanced way," Plouffe told ABC's "This Week" programme.
After weeks of haggling in Congress, Obama stepped in belatedly to help reach a deal over the fiscal year budget which covers government spending through September 2011.
The 11th hour accord reached late Friday, which cuts $38.5 billion in spending over the next six months, will be voted on in Congress later this week but is a done-deal.
In his weekly media address Saturday, Obama called the agreement "the biggest annual spending cut in history," but said he had given ground to Republicans and accepted "painful" cuts.
His Republican interlocutor, House Speaker John Boehner, wound up with most of the spending reductions he sought, including one which would bar Washington DC from spending city funds to provide abortions for low-income women.
Many Democrats were said to be unhappy with a bill which made substantive cuts in social spending for the poor, while many Republicans complained it did not go far enough in cutting government programmes.
But in the end both sides walked away from the precipice of a government shutdown, which would have closed vital government services and seen hundreds of thousands of workers go without a pay cheque.
Obama underscored the relief with an impromptu visit on Saturday to the Lincoln Memorial - among the many sites that would have closed - bounding up the marble stairs leading to the enormous statue of America's 16th president.
"I just wanted to say, real quick, that because Congress was able to settle its differences, that's why this place is open today and everybody is able to enjoy their visit," Obama told stunned tourists as security guards looked on.
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