President Barack Obama’s Sept. 8 speech to a joint session of Congress will likely offer deficit-control plans, as well as a series of programs to jump-start the economy, according to a White House budget report.
“The President will recommend an ambitious, comprehensive, and balanced deficit reduction plan to Congress in September that would place the country on firm fiscal footing by the middle of this decade,” said the report, titled “Fiscal Year 2012 Mid-Session Review.”
The speech will also feature a series of programs to boost growth and employment, which the report described as “a package of meaningful, new initiatives to promote economic growth and create jobs.”
Obama’s deficit-reduction proposal may be a revised version of his failed effort to strike a $4 trillion deal, an offer he made during the debt ceiling talks with GOP budget-cutters.
White House officials wanted the deal to bolster his campaign-trail claim to be a consensus builder and a fiscal conservative. House Speaker John Boehner rejected the deal after Obama pressed for $1.2 trillion in tax increases over a decade.
“Considering that both parties had agreed on the size of the deficit reduction necessary — $4 trillion over the next decade — there was hope that a balanced package of that size, which included both spending cuts and revenue measures, could be agreed to,” the report said. “Unfortunately, congressional Republicans would not agree to a package that included revenue increases.”
The spending programs that Obama will propose, according to the report, “will build on the actions the President has been urging Congress to complete that will strengthen the economy and create jobs, but also include new measures that will accelerate job growth in the short term.
“These could include a mix of tax cuts to create jobs and provide economic security to the middle class, innovative infrastructure ideas to put people back to work, and some measures specifically targeted at the long-term unemployed and other specific sectors of the economy that are in particular need.”
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