Seeking to regain the initiative on spending cuts from House Republicans before Congress begins both the budget and debt fights, President Obama later this week will lay out a new plan to make real dents in the federal deficit, the White House said Sunday. Making the rounds of the weekend political talk shows, White House senior adviser David Plouffe, the president’s campaign manager in 2008, said the president will call for increased taxes on higher-income taxpayers and for specific deficit-reduction targets the government should meet.
Mr. Plouffe said he would leave the details for the president, who he said will deliver a speech on his “approach” to spending, but said the president will be joining the ongoing conversation.
“The congressional Republican plan [is out]; there’s a bipartisan group of senators called the gang of six working on something. The president is going to come out,” Mr. Plouffe said on CNN’s “State of the Union” program.
Republicans already are calling the planned speech a do-over for Mr. Obama’s 2012 budget, which he submitted to Congress just two months ago but which was widely panned by both parties for failing to tackle the big drivers of deficits and for using gimmicks that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office rejected.
Spending is the dominant issue in Washington, with Congress still trying to wrap up the unfinished — and six months overdue — 2011 spending bills, even as the focus is shifting to the 2012 budget and whether to raise the federal borrowing limit beyond $15 trillion.
Republicans were dubious about Mr. Obama’s move.
“For the last two months we’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, Virginia Republican, said on “Fox News Sunday.”
The House Budget Committee last week passed a Republican-written 2012 budget that calls for major changes to the way Medicare and Medicaid operate.
Under that plan, Medicare beneficiaries would be allowed to choose from a marketplace of health plans, which could help the government control long-term costs. And Medicaid would be converted to a block-grant program for states to experiment.
