WASHINGTON – President Obama’s new budget lays down the political themes he will pound as he campaigns for re-election – more spending on jobs and higher taxes for the wealthy. It sets him apart from the Republican contenders and gives Democrats a platform to run on.
And a target for GOP candidates to shoot at.
In his $3.8 trillion spending plan for the budget year that begins Oct. 1, Obama levels direct criticism at Republicans. Though nobody is expecting the budget to be embraced by Congress, that’s still an unusual negotiating tactic in a usually dry document. It highlights the elevated political stakes.
“Unfortunately, Republicans in Congress blocked both our deficit reduction measures and almost every part of the American Jobs Act for the simple reason that they were unwilling to ask the wealthiest Americans to pay their fair share,” Obama said in his budget introduction.
It was a reference to a legislative plan that Obama proposed in September and that Congress ignored. Many of its features are incorporated into his new budget.
Much of the presidential spending outline, in fact, plays to Obama’s election-year agenda, a strategy not lost on Republicans.
“This proposal isn’t really a budget at all. It’s a campaign document,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Obama’s budget blueprint showcases the major priorities of his presidency, ones that contrast sharply with Republicans’ near-solid opposition to tax increases and advocacy for deep spending cuts, including in popular benefit programs such as Medicare and Medicare.
The president seeks to achieve about $4 trillion in deficit-reduction over the next decade, with $1.5 trillion of it coming from higher taxes – both by going after wealthy individuals and by closing some corporate loopholes.
With such calls, Obama is seeking to rally middle-class support and capitalize on recent polls that show most Americans believe the rich aren’t paying enough taxes.
“We don’t begrudge success in America,” Obama said Monday. “We do expect everybody to do their fair share, so that everybody has opportunity, not just some.”
It’s not unusual for presidents to put out politically laced budgets when they’re seeking re-election, said longtime congressional budget analyst Stanley Collender.
“The White House clearly made an assessment that nothing they could propose would be accepted by the Republicans in Congress,” said Collender, a managing director of Qorvis Capital, an economic consulting firm in Washington.
“So why not take advantage of the circumstances and propose what you want, instead of what they want? And that’s what they did,” Collender said.
It was probably a safe bet. Because of partisan deadlock, Congress has not passed an annual budget in nearly three years. The government has been kept running by a series of appropriations measures.
