Obama: U.S. facing trillion-dollar deficit

WASHINGTON, Jan. 6 (UPI) -- President-elect Barack Obama said Tuesday the United States may be facing trillion-dollar deficits "for years to come."

Obama also said his administration would seek to end congressional earmarks -- commonly called "pork" -- as part of budget reform.

Speaking to reporters in Washington, Obama said his economic advisers now forecast "that, at the current course and speed, a trillion-dollar deficit will be here before we even start the next budget, that ... we're already looking at a trillion-dollar budget deficit or close to a trillion-dollar budget deficit, and that potentially we've got trillion-dollar deficits for years to come, even with the economic recovery that we are working on at this point."

Obama said the American people were demanding change in November's election, "change in policies that helped deliver the worst economic crisis that we've seen since the Great Depression, but they're also looking for a change in the way that Washington does business. They were demanding that we restore a sense of responsibility and prudence to how we'd run our government."

Besides ending earmarks, the president-elect said his administration would take a number of steps for budget reform:

-- "Set a higher standard of accountability, transparency and oversight."

-- "Create an economic recovery oversight board ... to identify problems early."

-- "Put information ... online so that the American people know exactly where their precious tax dollars are going and whether we hit our marks."

-- "Eliminate outmoded programs and make the ones that we need work better."