US President Barack Obama will propose trimming or chopping 120 government programs to help rein in the US deficit, the White House said on Saturday, in a budget proposal for next year that a newspaper reported would hit US$3.8 trillion.
Obama is slated to publish his budget proposal today for the fiscal year starting on Oct 1.
The White House declined to confirm or deny a report in the New York Times that valued the budget at US$3.8 trillion.
The newspaper said the proposal would include US$25 billion for struggling states and provide funding increases for programs at the Energy Department, National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation and the Census Bureau.
An administration official confirmed that the budget would include a 6 percent increase in civilian research programs.
Obama has promised to tackle record deficits with a spending freeze on some domestic programs. The three-year freeze, which excludes spending on national security and defense programs as well as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid entitlement programs, would save US$20 billion in fiscal 2011 and US$250 billion by 2020.
The White House gave a preview of some of the proposed cuts on its blog on Saturday.
“The President believes we need to be honest about what is working and what isn’t and that making tough choices about which programs to fund and which to reduce or terminate is part of governing,” White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer said in a statement.
The country’s US$1.4 trillion budget deficit is a political albatross for Obama, with Republicans seeking to paint the president as a big spender while the White House emphasizes he inherited a US$1.3 trillion deficit when he took office.
One of the administration’s proposals, a repeat from last year, would eliminate the “Advanced Earned Income Tax Credit,” which allows eligible taxpayers with children to get a portion of a tax credit paid out in their paychecks.
The White House said only 514,000 people — 3 percent of those eligible — claimed the credit and the error rate for the program was high, with 80 percent of recipients not complying with one or more of the program’s requirements.
“This ineffective and prone-to-error program should be eliminated,” Pfeiffer said.
Congress rejected that cut last year — a sign that it may be hard to get through this proposal. The White House said it would fight congressional resistance to cut wasteful programs.
Other changes include consolidating 38 programs at the Department of Education into 11 to clamp down on inefficiencies and demand greater accountability from states and school districts on grants.
The budget would again target a program originally created to restore land with abandoned coal mines. The program had changed from its original focus and now allowed payments to go to states and tribes that had already cleaned up the mines.
A program related to national parks was also on the chopping block.
The New York Times said space agency NASA’s mission to fly back to the moon would be scrapped and some public works projects by the Army Corps of Engineers would lose funding.
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
LANDSLIDES POSSIBLE: The agency advised the public to avoid visiting mountainous regions due to more expected aftershocks and rainfall from a series of weather fronts A series of earthquakes over the past few days were likely aftershocks of the April 3 earthquake in Hualien County, with further aftershocks to be expected for up to a year, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Based on the nation’s experience after the quake on Sept. 21, 1999, more aftershocks are possible over the next six months to a year, the agency said. A total of 103 earthquakes of magnitude 4 on the local magnitude scale or higher hit Hualien County from 5:08pm on Monday to 10:27am yesterday, with 27 of them exceeding magnitude 5. They included two, of magnitude
Taiwan’s first drag queen to compete on the internationally acclaimed RuPaul’s Drag Race, Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅), was on Friday crowned the “Next Drag Superstar.” Dressed in a sparkling banana dress, Nymphia Wind swept onto the stage for the final, and stole the show. “Taiwan this is for you,” she said right after show host RuPaul announced her as the winner. “To those who feel like they don’t belong, just remember to live fearlessly and to live their truth,” she said on stage. One of the frontrunners for the past 15 episodes, the 28-year-old breezed through to the final after weeks of showcasing her unique