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WASHINGTON – The $4 trillion budget that President Barack Obama sends Congress on Monday proposes higher taxes on wealthier Americans and corporations, and an ambitious $478 billion public works program for highway, bridge and transit upgrades.
Newly constructed roadways were built in Fairfax County, Va., in 2012. The president’s $4 trillion budget proposes $478 billion for highway, bridge and transit upgrades. (The Associated Press)
The grab-bag of proposals, many recycled from past Obama budgets, already is generating fierce objections from Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress for the first time in his presidency. They will move ahead on their own, mindful they eventually must strike a deal with Obama, whose signature is needed for the budget to become law.
The spending blueprint for the 2016 budget year that begins Oct. 1 emphasizes the same themes as Obama’s State of the Union address last month, when he challenged Congress to work with him on narrowing the income gap between the very wealthy and everyone else.
OBAMA: Republicans agree on U.S. need to build infrastructure
Obama, in an NBC interview before the Super Bowl, disputed a suggestion that he and the Republican-led Congress are so far apart that his budget proposals have no chance of winning approval.
“I think Republicans believe that we should be building our infrastructure,” Obama said. “The question is how do we pay for it? That’s a negotiation we should have.”
The president said he was putting forward good proposals but was willing to listen to ideas presented by Republicans as well.
“My job is not to trim my sails and not tell the American people what we should be doing, pretending somehow we don’t need better roads, that we don’t need more affordable college,” Obama said.
In documents obtained by The Associated Press, Obama lays out the country’s first $4 trillion budget – $3.999 trillion before rounding – with proposed spending supported by $3.5 trillion in revenues.
The projected budget deficit would be $474 billion, slightly higher than the $467 billion forecast by the Congressional Budget Office for 2016. The CBO sees the deficits rising for the rest of the decade, once again topping $1 trillion by 2025 as spending surges in the government’s big benefit programs with the retirement of millions of baby boomers. Obama’s budget does not make major changes in politically popular programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Republicans are promising action in their budget plans.
Obama’s six-year $478 billion public works program would provide upgrades for the nation’s highways, bridges and transit systems, in an effort to tap into bipartisan support for spending on badly needed repairs.
Half of that money would come from a one-time mandatory tax on profits that U.S. companies have amassed overseas, according to White House officials.
The administration wants to overhaul corporate taxes by ending certain tax breaks and lowering rates, a challenging task that Obama and Republican leaders insist they are ready to tackle.
Higher taxes on the wealthy and on fees paid by the largest financial institutions would help raise $320 billion for low- and middle-income tax credits. Obama also is calling for a $60 billion program for free community college for qualified students and an $80 billion child care initiative.
“What I think the president is trying to do here is to, again, exploit envy economics,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, the new chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. “This top-down redistribution doesn’t work.”
But Ryan, R-Wis., also told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he was willing “to work with this administration to see if we can find common ground on certain aspects of tax reform.”
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