<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>Obama's budget 'will create $14 trillion deficit'
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Washington - United States President Barack Obama's budget would produce US$9.3trillion (S$14trillion) in deficits over the next decade, an eye-popping figure that threatens his ambitious goals to overhaul health care and explore new energy sources, say congressional auditors.
New Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures which emerged on Friday offer a far more dire outlook for Mr Obama's budget than the new administration predicted just last month - a deficit US$2.3trillion worse.
It is a prospect even the President's own budget director called unsustainable.
In his White House campaign run, Mr Obama assailed the economic policies of his predecessor, Mr George W. Bush.
But the dismal deficit figures, if they prove to be accurate, would amount to more than four times the deficits of Mr Bush's presidency and raise the prospect that Mr Obama and his Democratic allies controlling Congress would have to consider raising taxes once the recession ends.
By the auditors' calculation, Mr Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1trillion a year between 2010 and 2019.
Worst of all, the budget office says the deficit under Mr Obama's policies would never go below 4per cent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable.
By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5per cent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.
White House budget chief Peter Orszag said the CBO's long-range economic projections were more pessimistic than those of the White House, private economists and the Federal Reserve, and he remained confident that Mr Obama's budget, if enacted, would produce smaller deficits.
Deficits so big put upward pressure on interest rates as the government offers more attractive interest rates to attract borrowers.
Mr Obama defended his budget plans, insisting that he remained committed to halving the deficit within four years.
'In total, our budget would bring discretionary spending for domestic programmes as a share of the economy to its lowest level in nearly half a century,' the President said in his weekly radio address.
'And we will continue making these tough choices in the months and years ahead so that, as our economy recovers, we do what we must to bring this deficit down.'
Earlier, he said he would be issuing guidelines for spending infrastructure money in the stimulus package.
'Whenever a project comes up for review, we will ask a few simple questions: Does it advance the core mission of the Recovery Act? Does it jump-start job creation? Does it lay the foundation for lasting prosperity?' he said.
The Act specifically excludes projects such as casinos, aquariums and zoos, golf courses and swimming pools, Vice-President Joe Biden said, in a letter sent separately to the US Conference of Mayors as part of the President's announcement. AP, Bloomberg, AFP
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->Washington - United States President Barack Obama's budget would produce US$9.3trillion (S$14trillion) in deficits over the next decade, an eye-popping figure that threatens his ambitious goals to overhaul health care and explore new energy sources, say congressional auditors.
New Congressional Budget Office (CBO) figures which emerged on Friday offer a far more dire outlook for Mr Obama's budget than the new administration predicted just last month - a deficit US$2.3trillion worse.
It is a prospect even the President's own budget director called unsustainable.
In his White House campaign run, Mr Obama assailed the economic policies of his predecessor, Mr George W. Bush.
But the dismal deficit figures, if they prove to be accurate, would amount to more than four times the deficits of Mr Bush's presidency and raise the prospect that Mr Obama and his Democratic allies controlling Congress would have to consider raising taxes once the recession ends.
By the auditors' calculation, Mr Obama's budget would generate deficits averaging almost $1trillion a year between 2010 and 2019.
Worst of all, the budget office says the deficit under Mr Obama's policies would never go below 4per cent of the size of the economy, figures that economists agree are unsustainable.
By the end of the decade, the deficit would exceed 5per cent of gross domestic product, a dangerously high level.
White House budget chief Peter Orszag said the CBO's long-range economic projections were more pessimistic than those of the White House, private economists and the Federal Reserve, and he remained confident that Mr Obama's budget, if enacted, would produce smaller deficits.
Deficits so big put upward pressure on interest rates as the government offers more attractive interest rates to attract borrowers.
Mr Obama defended his budget plans, insisting that he remained committed to halving the deficit within four years.
'In total, our budget would bring discretionary spending for domestic programmes as a share of the economy to its lowest level in nearly half a century,' the President said in his weekly radio address.
'And we will continue making these tough choices in the months and years ahead so that, as our economy recovers, we do what we must to bring this deficit down.'
Earlier, he said he would be issuing guidelines for spending infrastructure money in the stimulus package.
'Whenever a project comes up for review, we will ask a few simple questions: Does it advance the core mission of the Recovery Act? Does it jump-start job creation? Does it lay the foundation for lasting prosperity?' he said.
The Act specifically excludes projects such as casinos, aquariums and zoos, golf courses and swimming pools, Vice-President Joe Biden said, in a letter sent separately to the US Conference of Mayors as part of the President's announcement. AP, Bloomberg, AFP
