OMB Chief: Budget Bipartisan in More Than One Sense
The budget is also bipartisan in the sense that there are things in it both sides of the aisle can hate.
The budget being unveiled today would slightly improve the annual deficit in Fiscal 2011 as a percentage of GDP (which last year was 8.54 percent), and include more money in the areas of education, research & development, and clean energy. It projects a $1.2 trillion deficit reduction over the next 10 years.
But it also contains such measures as a tax on big banks, allowing tax cuts for people making more than $250,000 a year to expire and eliminating tax subsidies on fossil fuels. The budget also calls for a three-year freeze on discretionary spending (which excludes defense, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid).
Liberals don't like it - they think the president should be spending more to stimulate the economy; conservatives think he should be trimming down the huge deficit more quickly.
When asked on CBS' "The Early Show" this morning which the White House considered more important, job creations or deficit reduction, Peter Orszag, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, said it was a matter of timing. "We've got to jump-start job creation now, and then out over time bring the deficits down, and the reason we need to bring those deficits down is precisely to keep the job creation machine going over time — and also, I would note, while making investments in education and R & D and other spurs to economic activity."
Orszag said there was a placeholder in the president's budget proposal (which will be forwarded to Congress today) of $100 billion for additional job creation measures, including the new employer tax credit he described in last week's State of the Union address to benefit small businesses that expand their hiring sooner rather than later.
"Do you think there will be Republican cooperation on any of this?" asked anchor Harry Smith?
"Well, I certainly hope so," Orszag said. "Remember, what we're trying to do here is promote job growth now, bring the deficits down over time, and invest in education, R & D and clean energy. I think those are bipartisan themes."
And what about cooperation from the president's own party?
"Look, none of this is easy," Orszag admitted. "We're proposing freezing non-security discretionary spending, for example; [that] has made some on the left unhappy. There are other parts of the budget that make some on the right unhappy.
"None of this is easy, but it is crucially important for the American people."
Watch the interview with Peter Orszag and a report on the budget by CBS News Chief White House correspondent Bill Plante: