The Down Range Forum
Member Section => Politics & RKBA => Topic started by: philw on February 01, 2010, 08:45:45 PM
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http://www.news.com.au/business/story/0,23636,26665620-31037,00.html
US President Barack Obama has unveiled a budget projecting a record deficit this year, with billions of dollars to curb unemployment and tax hikes on the rich to tame big fiscal shortfalls.
"It's a budget that reflects the serious challenges facing the country," Mr Obama said at the White House overnight after sending the mammoth spending plan to Congress.
"We're at war, our economy has lost seven million jobs the last two years and our Government is deeply in debt after what can only be described as a decade of profligacy."
The $US3.834 trillion ($4.36 trillion) dollar budget includes a freeze on non-security discretionary spending, a $US100 billion dollar jobs package and more money for overseas wars, education and homeland security.
It makes a grim forecast that unemployment, now at 10 per cent, will average 9.2 per cent in 2011, and 8.2 per cent in 2012, the year when Mr Obama faces a re-election campaign, carrying a punishing legacy of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The economic forecast, however, predicts solid GDP growth of 2.7 per cent in 2010 and 3.8 per cent in 2011.
The budget, for fiscal year 2011, foresees a record deficit of $US1.556 trillion in 2010, falling to $US1.267 trillion in 2011, and abandons a bid to send men back to the moon, by ending the Constellation program.
The Obama administration said the 2011 budget is aimed at dealing with the aftermath of the financial, fiscal, housing and unemployment crises, and to put the United States on a path to long-term economic security.
The budget will also set the battle lines for the political debate in the run-up to mid-term congressional elections in November, in which Mr Obama's Democrats, paying the price for high unemployment, fear heavy losses.
The administration says the deficit will stand at $US1.267 trillion in 2011, which will represent 8.3 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), compared to 10.6 per cent of GDP in 2010.
Republicans and some conservative Democrats have raised the alarm at high government spending, which has swelled the deficit, and the issue has been a source of considerable political pressure for Mr Obama.
But some analysts warn it is too early to focus on cutting deficits and fear the tactic risks slowing the spending needed to stimulate the economy and generate jobs.
Mr Obama's budget chief, Peter Orszag, told reporters the administration thought it had the balance right, between spurring recovery and making a start of trimming deficits which pose a grave long-term economic threat.
"Federal spending is a little like an aircraft carrier, you have to start turning the ship well ahead of time," he said.
The 2011 budget contains more than $US300 billion in tax cuts for families and businesses over the next 10 years and terminates 120 programs for savings of $US20 billion.
It will, however, allow tax cuts introduced by former president George W Bush to expire for people earning more than $US250,000 a year.
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further to this
http://www.news.com.au/breaking-news/obama-abandons-man-to-moon-bid/story-e6frfku0-1225825686330
US President Barack Obama will today formally propose abandoning plans to return US astronauts to the moon.
The move means the President will be ending the costly Constellation next-generation rocket program.
Arguing it must trim spending in tough times, the administration will instead direct NASA to turn to long-range research and development which could eventually lead to a manned space program to Mars, a senior US official said.
"We are cancelling the program, not delaying it,'' Obama's budget chief Peter Orszag told reporters.
The decision will mean NASA will be constrained to low-earth orbits for years to come, and will transform the aspirations of the US space program following the planned retirement of the Shuttle fleet in September.
Under the new plan, Obama will also propose boosting the development of commercial rockets and other vehicles that can ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS), an outside US government advisor said.
The Constellation program was launched in 2004 by then-president George W Bush after the Columbia space shuttle mission ended in disaster with the death of all seven crew members in 2003.
NASA has faced growing pressure to cut its budget as the US government's debt soars and the United States buckles under the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
The agency has also seen dwindling political support, with its White House and congressional paymasters reluctant to fund the type of expensive manned space exploration that saw the agency put 12 men on the moon.
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And he's raising taxes on the 'rich' (over 200K) and businesses. THAT should be the final nail in the budget killing! >:(
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Another pre-election promise goes spiraling down in flames.....
Now that's some change right there...Still hoping the Nov. elections get him shut down, to an even "lamer" duck.
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I loved how he chastized Bush and the GOP for all their spending, but for the past 5 years he voted for every budget that went through congress
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I loved how he chastized Bush and the GOP for all their spending, but for the past 5 years he voted for every budget that went through congress
Fuzzy math Eric? Its been 54 weeks, not 5 years. (Though it may seem like it). ;D
FQ13