Last hour budget discussions avoided a partial government shut-down and President Barack Obama will lay out his plan for long-term deficit reduction demanded by conservatives this week.
White House Senior Adviser David Plouffe was on Sunday talk shows to reveal Obama’s intentions and deliver the administration’s message that more deals like the one reached last Friday night with House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, will be necessary as Congress and the administration face more major budget decisions in the coming months.
Obama’s plan would address rising costs of Medicare, Medicaid, cut defense spending and raise revenue by ending tax breaks for the wealthy, Plouffe.
“He does believe that to grow economically, to be a strong country, we can’t sustain this fiscal situation,” Plouffe explained on CNN. Acknowledging some dissent among the president’s liberal base, Plouffe continued, “there are some that don’t agree with that, but he believes strongly that we do have to engage in serious deficit reduction.”
Last week, Obama and congressional leaders reached an agreement to cut $38.5 billion in non-military discretionary spending for the rest of the current fiscal year, ends on September 30.
The deal came about an hour before funding authorization for the government was scheduled to expire, and would have partially shut down government operations.
