US President Barack Obama sent Congress a US$3.8 trillion budget plan that hopes to tame galloping deficits by raising taxes on the wealthy and trimming the US’ most popular benefit programs. In aiming for a compromise between Republicans who refuse to raise taxes and Democrats who want to protect those benefits, he is upset some on both sides.
The White House wants to break away from the current cycle of moving from one fiscal crisis to another while the government skirts the brink of a shutdown. Deep political divisions have blocked substantial agreements to address the country’s gaping debt.
It is unlikely that US Congress will begin serious budget negotiations before summer, when the government once again will be confronted with the need to raise its borrowing limit or face the prospect of a first-ever default on US debt.
The president’s budget proposal includes US$1.8 trillion in new deficit cuts as the US tries to wrestle down its debt. The last time the government ran an annual surplus was in 2001.
On Wednesday, the US Department of theTreasury said the US deficit was on pace to finish below US$1 trillion for the first time in five years. The deficit hit a record US$1.41 trillion in budget year 2009.
Obama’s budget blueprint for next year assumes that Washington reverses the recent deep budget cuts that have become a daily reality for the military.
It calls for a base Department of Defense budget of US$526.6 billion — US$52 billion more than the level established by the blunt spending cuts, which had been designed to force the White House and Congress to reach a fiscal deal to avoid them.
The president’s spending and tax plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 is two months late. It projects deficit reductions of US$1.8 trillion over the next decade, achieved with higher taxes, reductions in payments to Medicare health aid providers and cutbacks in the cost-of-living adjustments paid to millions of recipients in Social Security pensions and other government programs.
A key advocacy group for the aging on Wednesday said it was “deeply dismayed” by the plan to trim the government’s two biggest benefit programs.
Obama himself said his offer to trim future benefit increases for tens of millions of people is “less than optimal” and acceptable only if Republicans simultaneously agree to raise taxes on the wealthy.
“If anyone thinks I’ll finish the job of deficit reduction on the backs of middle-class families or through spending cuts alone that actually hurt our economy short-term, they should think again,” the president said.
Republicans have rejected higher taxes, arguing that the US$600 billion increase on wealthy earners that was part of a December agreement to avoid a sharp hit to the economy is all they will tolerate.
The administration maintains that Obama’s proposal is balanced, with the proper mix of spending cuts and tax increases.
A US YouTuber who caused outrage for filming himself kissing a statue commemorating Korean wartime sex slaves has been sentenced to six months in prison, a court in Seoul said yesterday. Johnny Somali, 25, gained notoriety several years ago for recording himself doing a series of provocative stunts in South Korea and Japan, and streaming them on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. South Korean authorities indicted Somali — whose real name is Ramsey Khalid Ismael — in 2024 on public order violations and obstruction of business, and banned him from leaving the country. “The court has sentenced him to six months in
Former Lima mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga, a Peruvian presidential hopeful, gathered hundreds of supporters in Lima on Tuesday and gave authorities 24 hours to annul the first round of the country’s election over allegations of fraud. Lopez Aliaga is locked in a tight three-way race with two other candidates for second place in Sunday’s vote. The election runner-up wins a ticket to June’s presidential run-off against front-runner Keiko Fujimori. “I am giving them 24 hours to declare this electoral fraud null and void,” said Lopez Aliaga, surrounded by a crowd of several hundred supporters. “If it is not declared null and void tomorrow,
Four contenders are squaring up to succeed Antonio Guterres as secretary-general of the UN, which faces unprecedented global instability, wars and its own crushing budget crisis. Chile’s Michelle Bachelet, Argentina’s Rafael Grossi, Costa Rica’s Rebeca Grynspan and Senegal’s Macky Sall are each to face grillings by 193 member states and non-governmental organizations for three hours today and tomorrow. It is only the second time the UN has held a public question-and-answer, a format created in 2016 to boost transparency. Ultimately the five permanent members of the UN’s top body, the Security Council, hold the power, wielding vetoes over who leads the
A humanoid robot that won a half-marathon race for robots in Beijing on Sunday ran faster than the human world record in a show of China’s technological leaps. The winner from Honor, a Chinese smartphone maker, completed the 21km race in 50 minutes and 26 seconds, said a WeChat post by the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area, also known as Beijing E-Town, where the race began. That was faster than the human world record holder, Ugandan Jacob Kiplimo, who finished the same distance in about 57 minutes in March at the Lisbon road race. The performance by the robot marked a significant step forward
RSS