Obama Lays Out Plan to Reduce Deficit by $4 Trillion in 12 Years

President Barack Obama on Wednesday laid out what he called “a more balanced approach” than House Republicans to reduce the nation’s burgeoning deficit by proposing a budget that would reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over 12 years through a four-step plan, which includes eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

Obama said that the budget plan offered by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., is “deeply pessimistic.”

Obama said his approach to reduce the deficit borrowed from the recommendations of the bipartisan Fiscal Commission that he appointed last year, and builds on the roughly $1 trillion in deficit reduction that he proposed in his 2012 budget. “It’s an approach that puts every kind of spending on the table,” Obama said in his speech at George Washington University in Washington. “But one that protects the middle class, our promise to seniors, and our investments in the future.”

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said after Obama’s speech that the President's plan had one "concrete" goal it achieved: "raising taxes."

Noting how dire the nation’s deficit situation is, Obama said in his speech that “even after our economy recovers, our government will still be on track to spend more money than it takes in throughout this decade and beyond. That means we’ll have to keep borrowing more from countries like China.” And, he continued, “that means more of your tax dollars will go toward paying off the interest on all the loans we keep taking out. By the end of this decade, the interest we owe on our debt could rise to nearly $1 trillion. Just the interest payments.”

Obama went on to say that as the Baby Boomers started to retire and health care costs continued to rise, “the situation will get even worse. By 2025, the amount of taxes we currently pay will only be enough to finance our health care programs, Social Security and the interest we owe on our debt. That’s it.” Every other national priority–education, transportation, even national security–will have to be paid for with borrowed money, he said. “Ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy. It will prevent us from making the investments we need to win the future.”

Around two-thirds of the nation’s budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and national security, Obama said. “Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits and tax credits for working families take up another 20%. What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12% for everything else. That’s 12% for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.”

Up until now, Obama continued, “the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12%. But cuts to that 12% alone won’t solve the problem.

So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget.”