President Barack Obama on Monday was selling a a $3.8 trillion election-year budget _ a spending outline designed to cut $4 trillion from the deficit in 10 years through spending restraints and higher taxes on the wealthy. Republicans said the plan fails to tackle the nation's deep fiscal problems. 
 
 In this photo released by CBS News White house Chief of Staff Jacob Lew talks on CBS's Face the Nation in Washington Sunday, Feb. 12, 2012. Lew, who appeared on various Sunday shows, said the new budget... (Associated Press) 
 
 Obama's budget _ as much a political document as spending plan _ clearly sets him apart from Republicans who are rabidly opposed to higher taxes and believe the only way to cut government red ink is to slash the heavy burden of social programs, particularly the federal Medicare health insurance program for Americans at age 65. 
 
 The budget frames and likely will intensify the deep partisan divisions that have kept Washington in gridlock since Republicans regained majority control of the House of Representatives in the 2010 election. 
 
 The president would achieve $1.5 trillion of the deficit reductions in tax increases on the wealthy and by removing certain corporate tax breaks. Obama rejected Republican charges of class warfare. "This is not about class warfare. This is about the nation's welfare," he insisted. 
 
 In a message that repeated populist themes Obama also sounded in his State of the Union address, the president defended his proposed tax increases on the wealthy, saying it was important that the burden of getting deficits under control be a shared responsibility. 
 
 "This is about making fair choices that benefit not just the people who have done fantastically well over the last few decades but that also benefit the middle class, those fighting to get into the middle class and the economy as a whole," Obama said. 
 
 Obama used an appearance before students at Northern Virginia Community College to unveil the budget and highlight a $8 billion proposal that aims at boosting the ability of the nation's community colleges to train students for the jobs of the future. 
 
 While administration officials defended the overall plan as a balanced approach, Republicans found ready material for attacks, particularly over Obama's failed 2009 promise to cut the skyrocketing deficit in half by the end of his first term. 
 
 "It seems like the president has decided again to campaign instead of govern," Republican Rep. Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, said in an interview. "He's just going to duck the responsibility to tackle this country's fiscal problems." Ryan is preparing an alternative to Obama's budget that will be similar to a measure that the House approved last year but failed in the Senate. 
 
 Jack Lew, Obama's chief of staff, said the administration had to contend with a deep recession and soaring unemployment that had driven the deficits higher than anyone anticipated. He said Obama's plan would cut the deficit below 3 percent of gross domestic product by 2018, to levels that economists generally view as sustainable. 
 
 He said faster deficit cuts now would set back an economy still struggling with high unemployment. Lew, Obama's former budget chief, also said it was critical that Congress agree to extend a payroll tax cut due to expire at the end of February. Failure to extend it, he said, would cause another hit to the economy. 
 
 The debate is almost certain to go all the way to Election Day in November, with gridlock keeping Congress from resolving many pressing issues on expiring tax cuts and across-the-board spending cuts until a lame duck session at year's end. That is the period between the November elections and the following January, when newly elected officials take their seats in Congress. Depending on the outcome of the presidential race, Obama, too, could be facing a departure from the White House in January. 
 
 Obama's spending blueprint for the budget year that begins Oct. 1 projects a deficit for this year of $1.33 trillion. That would mean four straight years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits. 
 
 The budget projects a decline in the deficit to $901 billion in 2013 and continued improvements shrinking the deficit to $575 billion in 2018. 
 
 Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said Senate Democrats did not want to vote on Obama's spending plan. To force their hands, he will once again put it forward for a vote in the upper chamber, where he predicted it would fail as it did last year. 
 
 Lew blamed House Republicans for pushing extreme measures rather than trying to reach consensus with Democrats and avoid the kinds of last-minute crises that roiled financial markets in 2011, such as the summer showdown over raising the government's borrowing limit. 
 
 According to a White House fact sheet, Obama's budget will adhere closely to the approach he outlined in September in a submission to the congressional "supercommittee" that failed to agree on at least $1.2 trillion in additional spending cuts to keep across-the-board cuts from taking effect next January. 
 
 The Obama budget sticks to the caps on annual appropriations approved in August that will save $1 trillion over the next decade. It also puts forward $1.5 trillion in new taxes, primarily by allowing the tax cuts to expire at the end of this year for families making $250,000 or more per year. Those cuts were put in place during the presidency of George W. Bush, Obama's predecessor. 
 
 Obama, as he has in the past, also proposed eliminating tax deductions the wealthy receive and would put in place a rule named for billionaire Warren Buffett that would seek to make sure that households making more than $1 million annually pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes. 
 
 Obama would also impose a new $61 billion tax over 10 years on big banks aimed at recovering the costs of the financial bailout and providing money to help homeowners facing foreclosure on their homes. It would raise $41 billion over 10 years by eliminating tax breaks for oil, gas and coal companies and claims significant savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 
 
 Lew said the budget would cut spending by $2.50 for every $1 in extra taxes it seeks. 
 
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 Associated Press economics writer Martin Crutsinger contributed to this report. ||||| President Obama will send Congress a 2013 spending plan that would raise taxes on the rich and pump nearly $500 billion into new transportation projects over the next decade, launching an election-year debate over the budget that promises starkly different visions for managing government debt and the sluggish economy. 
 
 As they prepare to face voters in November, neither the president nor congressional Republicans are expected to roll out many new or potentially painful prescriptions for slowing the rise of the $15 trillion national debt. After failing repeatedly last year to forge a bipartisan consensus, few in either party see much point in trying again now. 
 
 Instead, Obama will on Monday reprise recommendations he unveiled last fall that seek to reduce borrowing by more than $3 trillion over the next decade while spending more in the short term to bring down persistently high unemployment. 
 
 The president’s blueprint calls for reductions in spending on federal health programs and the military, a small raise for federal workers and more than $1.5 trillion in new taxes on corporations, hedge-fund managers and the wealthy, in part through the expiration of the George W. Bush-era tax cuts on annual incomes of more than $250,000. 
 
 Obama also has called for changes to the tax code that would require households earning more than $1 million a year to pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes, but senior administration officials said Friday that the blueprint will provide no additional details on how such a levy would be structured. 
 
 To achieve his debt-reduction goal, Obama would rely on an accounting maneuver that permits him to claim about $850 billion in savings over the next decade by ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, a move Republicans have rejected as a gimmick. Obama would use a portion of those savings to finance new road and rail projects, rather than dedicating the full sum to lower deficits. 
 
 Obama’s budget also calls for new investments in education, manufacturing and federal research and development, and it would devote an additional $350 billion to boosting economic growth. That sum includes extending a temporary payroll tax holiday and emergency unemployment benefits through the end of the year. Both are scheduled to expire at the end of this month and are currently the focus of intense debate in Congress. 
 
 The president’s plan would push this year’s deficit above current projections, with the budget gap growing to $1.33 trillion — slightly higher than last year’s $1.3 trillion deficit and $200 billion more than congressional budget analysts recently projected for the fiscal year that ends in September. 
 
 The deficit would fall to $900 billion in 2013, and government borrowing would continue to slow through 2022, leaving the debt elevated by historic standards but no longer growing faster than the overall economy. 
 
 Senior administration officials said the blueprint offers a balanced approach that would protect the middle class while asking for greater sacrifice from the most fortunate. Every dollar in tax increases would be matched with $2.50 in spending cuts, they said, counting $1 trillion in previously adopted cuts to agency budgets. 
 
 Republicans immediately attacked the higher deficit figures, noting that Obama had failed to achieve his 2009 goal of cutting the deficit in half by the end of his first term. 
 
 “This unserious budget is a recipe for debt, doubt, and decline,” Michael Steel, a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), said in an e-mail. “It would make our economy worse by imposing massive tax increases on small business and still pile up enormous debt that stirs greater economic uncertainty.” 
 
 Next month, House Republicans plan to offer a more austere fiscal blueprint that rejects tax increases, preferring to stabilize borrowing by making deep cuts to government services, including Medicaid, the federal health program for the poor. Like last year’s GOP budget, it will call for repealing Obama’s initiative to expand health coverage for the uninsured while ignoring calls for short-term economic stimulus. 
 
 Aides say they expect House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to make one significant adjustment: replacing his plan to wholly privatize Medicare for new retirees in 2021 with a new privatization strategy that would preserve the 47-year-old federal health program — making the budget less vulnerable to partisan attack. 
 
 The GOP presidential candidates have largely embraced Ryan’s cuts-only vision, often tacking on more dramatic reductions. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney said Friday that he would raise the eligibility age for Social Security, which is currently on track to hit 67. And former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum has called for immediate cuts in Social Security benefits, rejecting the more common approach of protecting current retirees and people older than 55. 
 
 Meanwhile, Romney, Santorum and former House speaker Newt Gingrich are calling for massive tax cuts that even some Republicans worry could make it tough to reduce borrowing. 
 
 “I’ve become very concerned about deficits,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. “Clearly tax reform should help us create economic growth. But I don’t know that we can, at this point in time, expect to have any significant tax cuts that adversely impact the deficit.” 
 
 Both Obama and Ryan will map strategies for saving at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade that would eliminate the threat of across-the-board cuts scheduled to hit next January. But nobody is counting on either plan to be adopted. 
 
 House appropriators say they will use the president’s request as a starting point for agency spending bills. But Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who is battling to maintain control of the Senate, announced earlier this month that he would not stage a vote on a full budget plan this year. 
 
 In addition to being messy, divisive and pocked with political land mines for vulnerable incumbents, a budget vote is unnecessary, Reid said, because legislation adopted during last summer’s showdown over the federal debt limit set spending levels for 2013 agency budgets. 
 
 “We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year,” Reid told reporters. “We already did that.” 
 
 Republicans blasted Reid’s decision as irresponsible and politically driven, noting that a full-blown budget debate would require Senate Democrats to decide whether to accept or reject Obama’s tax increases and perhaps outline a vision for reining in spending on Social Security and Medicare, popular but expensive programs that are projected to drive future borrowing. Obama and congressional Democrats have said they would be willing to revamp the programs, but only if Republicans drop their objection to higher taxes on the rich. 
 
 Despite the ideological impasse, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) said he will take another stab at drafting a long-term plan that could tame the debt and garner bipartisan support. 
 
 “What are the odds? The odds aren’t good. But we have to try,” Conrad said, noting that many senators are eager for a “break-the-glass” blueprint that could be implemented quickly if a political consensus — or a new economic crisis — were suddenly to emerge. 
 
 “It’s absolutely imperative that we have plans on standby,” he said, “in case, God forbid, something were to happen.” ||||| President Barack Obama proposed a debt-cutting plan on Wednesday that calls for $4 trillion in deficit reduction over 12 years, along with an automatic trigger for spending cuts and tax increases if targets to rein in deficits aren’t met. 
 
 The speech answered a chorus of critics on the right and the left who have been demanding that Obama take a more prominent role in the debate over the nation’s grim long-term fiscal picture. 
 
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 While calling for an additional $2 trillion in spending cuts beyond his most recent budget, the president made no new tax or revenue proposals, though he stood by his long-stated plan to allow the Bush-era income tax rates to expire. Forgoing discussion of new revenues may dampen some Republican criticism of him but is certain to anger liberals who object to additional cuts in government services without parallel tax hikes. 
 
 “We have to use a scalpel and not a machete to cut the deficit … but doing nothing on the deficit is just not an option,” Obama told a largely silent audience at George Washington University. “Ultimately, all this rising debt will cost us jobs and damage our economy. It will prevent us from making the investments we need to win the future. … We can solve this problem. We came together as Democrats and Republicans to meet this challenge before and we can do it again.” 
 
 Even as he proposed his own plan, Obama lashed out at the House Republican budget plan crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), which seeks to reduce the deficit dramatically without raising taxes. 
 
 “It’s a vision that says up to 50 million Americans have to lose their health insurance in order for us to reduce the deficit,” Obama said. “This vision is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America. … [Republicans] want to give people like me a $200,000 tax cut that’s paid for by asking 33 seniors to each pay $6000 more in health costs. That’s not right and it’s not going to happen as long as I’m president.” 
 
 Obama said the fact that tax cuts for the wealthy would be extended and expanded as the budget cuts were made was the “worst” part of the GOP proposal. “We will all need to make sacrifices. We do not have to sacrifice the America we believe in,” he said. 
 
 Obama said he would find an additional $400 billion in cuts from defense and other security-related programs during that same period. Officials said that figure would come on top of reductions already mapped out by Defense Secretary Robert Gates that the administration estimates would save $400 billion over the next decade. 
 
 Gates learned about the new round of cuts Tuesday during a meeting with Obama at the White House, two administration sources said. Defense officials made clear that pulling another $400 billion out of defense and security-related budgets would have a substantial impact on what the U.S. military does and can do around the world. 
 
 “The Secretary has been clear that further significant defense cuts cannot be accomplished without reducing force structure and military capability,” Defense press secretary Geoff Morrell said. “The comprehensive review of missions, capabilities, and America’s role in the world will identify alternatives for the President’s consideration. The Secretary believes that this process must be about managing risk associated with future threats and national security challenges and identifying missions that the country is willing to have the military forgo.” 
 
 In his plan, Obama proposed an extra $480 billion in Medicare savings over 12 years. 
 
 “I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs,” Obama said. 
 
 The White House said a “debt fail-safe” mechanism would affect both spending and revenues if deficits don’t drop to an average of 2.8 percent of gross domestic product by the end of the decade. The automatic spending cuts would be fairly straightforward, but White House officials conceded that adjusting tax laws automatically would be more complex. ||||| The Obama administration is emphasizing “fairness” over deficit reduction in its renewed pitch for the “Buffett rule” ahead of next week’s scheduled Senate vote. 
 
 Introducing a minimum 30 percent income tax on millionaires “was never our plan to bring the deficit down and get the debt under control,” Jason Furman, the principal deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told reporters on a conference call Monday afternoon. “This is not the president’s entire tax plan. We’re not trying to say this solves all our economic problems, all our budget problems.” 
 
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 Making the argument for the rule based on billionaire investor Warren Buffett’s argument that it’s wrong for him to pay a lower tax rate than his secretary, President Barack Obama said in the State of the Union address in January that paying the “fair share of taxes” was necessary for a “sense of shared responsibility. That’s how we’ll reduce our deficit.” 
 
 Obama will be in Boca Raton, Fla., on Tuesday afternoon as part of the administration’s renewed push. Vice President Joe Biden also has a speech about tax fairness scheduled for Thursday in New Hampshire. 
 
 Obama’s campaign is using the chance to lambaste Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney, who paid 14 percent according to his 2010 tax forms. During a Monday conference call with reporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina called on Romney to release additional tax filings, saying, “The Buffett rule will help make our system reflect our values as all Americans play by the same rules, do their fair share and get a shot at success.” 
 
 Republicans have dismissed the proposal as a crass campaign stunt, because it won’t raise much revenue to pay down government debt after three straight years of deficits exceeding $1 trillion. 
 
 Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) slammed the bill late last month, after the congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the rule would generate $46.7 billion in revenues over the next decade. 
 
 “It was designed for no other reason than politics — there is no economic rationale for it,” Hatch said in a statement. “I hope the president will stop the class warfare and start leading by putting out real proposals to bring down our debt.” 
 
 But in the Monday conference call, Furman said that sum wasn’t too shabby. 
 
 “We think $47 billion is a meaningful amount of money to most Americans,” he said. 
 
 The estimate was reached through a form of government accounting known as “current law.” That assumes the tax rates first lowered by President George W. Bush — and extended in 2010 by Obama — will expire at the end of the year. Obama intends to end those tax breaks for Americans earning more than $250,000 a year, which is estimated to generate about $1 trillion in federal revenues over the next decade. 
 
 However, even advocates for the rule note that the debt pressures will eventually force the government to find additional sources of revenue, possibly leading to popular loopholes being closed and having capital gains taxed at the same rate as incomes. 
 
 “We can’t continue with the tax system that we have,” said Steve Wamhoff, legislative director at the progressive nonprofit Citizens for Tax Justice. “Some of these ideas that seem politically impossible have to become politically possible at some point, because there isn’t really any choice.”
– President Obama officially unveiled his $3.8 trillion budget today, and as expected it draws a 2012 battle line, calling for higher taxes on the wealthy combined with spending measures intended to bolster the economy, the AP reports. "We built this budget around the idea that our country has always done best when everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules," Obama said, according to CNN. "This is not about class warfare. This is about the nation's welfare." Obama's budget would institute the so-called "Buffett Rule," replacing the Alternative Minimum Tax with a 30% rate on income above $1 million. It would also bump the capital gains tax rate up to 20%, and allow Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy to expire. Obama unveiled the budget in a speech at Northern Virginia Community College, where he focused on a proposal to spend $8 billion boosting community colleges, Bloomberg reports. Obama estimates that under his budget the deficit would rise to $1.3 trillion in 2012, before falling to $901 billion in 2013. But the Wall Street Journal points out that Obama used cautious economic forecasts, ignoring recent employment gains. Republicans naturally bashed the budget for failing to address fiscal issues. "It seems like the president has decided again to campaign instead of govern," said Paul Ryan. For more on the budget particulars, click here.