WASHINGTON, Feb. 21 (UPI) -- President Barack Obama's first budget takes a stab at reducing the annual U.S. deficit by 50 percent in the next four years, officials say.
The president plans to outline the budget for the next fiscal year that starts in October at a White House conference Monday, The Washington Post reported. Congress will get a summary Thursday and then a several-hundred-page detailed budget in April.
Economists had predicted the deficit would be about $1.2 trillion, or 8.3 percent of gross domestic product, before Congress approved the $787 billion stimulus bill.
Administration officials said the president plans to raise business taxes and taxes on the richest Americans while cutting spending in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also plans to outline his healthcare reform plans.
One of Obama's major long-term problems is the strain on Social Security and especially on Medicare as the baby boomers hit retirement age. Officials said his budget plan includes chipping away at Medicare costs to begin addressing the looming deficit.
In his weekly radio address, Obama said his budget plan 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."
