President Obama at this year's State of the Union address.(Photo: Mandel Ngan, AP)
President Obama will call for an end to the automatic series of budget cuts known as sequestration when he proposes a new budget next week, the White House announced Thursday.
Obama, who will outline his plans in a meeting Thursday with House Democrats, wants to "reverse harmful sequestration cuts," and focus instead on "middle-class economics" that includes new programs for child care, paid leave and community college, the White House said in a statement.
The White House says sequestration is hurting the economy and the military, and that the president wants to "fully reverse those cuts for domestic priorities, and match those investments dollar-for-dollar with the resources our troops need to keep America safe."
Republicans who control both the House and the Senate say they too want to eliminate the sequester, but the Obama budget includes too many tax hikes and too much spending.
"Republicans believe there are smarter ways to cut spending than the sequester and have passed legislation to replace it multiple times, only to see the president continue to demand tax hikes," said Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Until he gets serious about solving our long-term spending problem it's hard to take him seriously."
GOP members note that the White House signed off on the 2011 budget plan that called for automatic across-the-board budget cuts if the parties couldn't agree on a separate package of cuts.
Don Stewart, deputy chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that "previous budgets submitted by the president have purported to reverse the bipartisan spending limits through tax increases that the Congress — even under Democrats — could never accept."
The coming budget battles follow November elections that gave Republicans control of the U.S. Senate and a bigger majority in the House. Obama, meanwhile, feels emboldened by signs of a recovering economy and higher approval ratings in political polls.
Obama travels to Philadelphia early on Thursday evening to discuss his budget plans at the House Democratic Issues Conference.
During his appearance in Philadelphia, Obama will also call for full funding of the Department of Homeland Security. Under a Republican plan, the department is financed only to the end of February as GOP lawmakers protest Obama's executive actions on immigration and are trying to pressure him into making changes.
"The president believes we should end the era of manufactured crises and mindless austerity," the White House said.
The statement noted that a 2013 agreement "helped us end some of these arbitrary budget cuts," and allowed the government to "invest in key national priorities while helping to cut our deficits to their lowest level since 2007."
The proposed budget to be issued Monday will include calls for "new advanced manufacturing institutes," road and bridge construction programs, and "a new age of precision medicine" that emphasizes the fights against diabetes and cancer," the White House said.
The budget plan — some of which Obama discussed in his State of the Union address Jan. 20 — also features proposals on tax credits for child care, paid sick leave and two years of community college financing for qualified students.
These and other programs are designed to help the middle class "by making paychecks go further, creating good jobs here in the United States, and preparing hardworking Americans to earn higher wages," the White House said.
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