WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama’s budget, unveiled with fanfare Thursday, fails to deal with his biggest monetary problems.
A molasses-slow economic recovery will make it hard to find the huge sums he’ll need to reach his biggest goals — fixing health care, confronting climate change and overhauling the tax system — without much deeper cuts than he is proposing in other programs.
The White House’s exercise in fiscal discipline this week amounts to micro-cutting — proposals that would trim half a percent of the overall budget — and doesn’t address the sacrosanct entitlements of Social Security and Medicare. His effort found a scant $17 billion in potential savings, suggesting that only a strong economy and its boost in government revenue can put a dent in the federal deficit and pay for Obama’s policy goals.
Pushing an ambitious agenda during a tepid economic rebound will require money and presidential muscle that even the popular president might find in short supply.
In just two months, the recession has proved to be deeper than the White House predicted when Obama submitted his 2010 budget outline. His budget writers in February forecast that the economy, as measured by gross domestic product, would shrink by 1.2 percent this year and then grow by 3.2 percent in 2010.
But the economy contracted by 6.1 percent in the first quarter, and economists predict another, though smaller, contraction in the second quarter.
A slow recovery heading into midterm congressional elections will probably make Democratic lawmakers especially cautious. What does that mean for the president’s agenda?
“It doesn’t improve chances,” said Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, a moderate Democrat.
