BARACK OBAMA sought to take his beleaguered presidency back to the middle of US politics at the launch of his 2011 budget yesterday by telling the American people it was time to live within their means once again and stop treating the dollar as though it were Monopoly money.
Unveiling a budget proposal that would see spending rise to $3.8 trillion (€2.7 trillion), pushing this year’s federal deficit to a historic high of $1.6 trillion (€1.15 trillion), Mr Obama held out the prospect of an injection of resources into schools, green energy and the two continuing wars.
But he also began to wield the knife, severing his ties to the Kennedy-era aspiration of space travel by cancelling plans to put astronauts back on the moon by 2020 and playing down battered plans for health reform.
At a press conference to launch the budget, Mr Obama said: “We simply cannot continue to spend as if the deficits do not have consequences; as if the tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money; as if we can ignore the problem for another generation. We can’t. It’s time to live within our means once again.”
In a written statement accompanying the budget, Mr Obama emphasised the point. “We must recognise that the era of irresponsibility in Washington must end. In the long term, we cannot have sustainable and durable economic growth without getting our fiscal house in order.”
But the president was accused of turning his back on five decades of US superiority in space by pulling the plug on plans to send astronauts back to the moon.
The president’s budget request to Congress lacked the funds to sustain Nasa’s $81 billion Constellation programme, the spaceships and rockets designed to put humans back on the lunar surface by 2020. Instead, the proposal added $6 billion to Nasa’s budget over the next five years for “the building blocks of a more capable approach to space exploration”.
Seeking to put the battles over health reform behind him, Mr Obama said spending on schools would rise by up to $4 billion to $29 billion.
Energy would be another winner at a time when Mr Obama is seeking to create more jobs to ease the pain of 10 per cent unemployment. The energy department’s budget would rise by about 7 per cent – almost $2 billion – through incentives for the development of renewable energy and nuclear power plants, with extra cash going to encourage research in cutting-edge technologies.
The administration is seeking to assuage some of the right-wing anger about record spending and deficit levels by presenting the budget as a moderate package that is neither left nor right.
To underline his fiscally responsible credentials, Mr Obama emphasised a three-year freeze on domestic spending that would save $250 billion, and cuts to about 120 federal programmes.
But Michael Steele, chairman of the Republican national committee, criticised the budget as yet more "binge spending" that would set the stage "for the type of economic stagnation we haven't seen since the days of Jimmy Carter". – ( Guardianservice)