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Obama vows to halve massive budget deficit
AFP - Tuesday, February 24
WASHINGTON, (AFP) - - President Barack Obama vowed to halve by 2013 the huge budget deficit bequeathed by the Bush White House, warning inaction would leave Americans wallowing in debt and thwarted dreams.
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After spending weeks imploring lawmakers to dish out billions of dollars in stimulus funds, Obama warned of the consequences of buckled US government balance sheets, opening yet another high-stakes week for his young presidency.
The latest push on the economy came as US stocks dived to their lowest levels since 1997, with analysts blaming a lack of details on Obama's plan to rescue the finance industry for the free-fall.
Obama warned efforts to save the crisis-wracked US economy with his 787 billion dollar economic kick-start plan would be futile without a drive to also bring deficits already topping a trillion dollars under control.
"Today, I am pledging to cut the deficit we inherited by half by the end of my first term in office," Obama said, at a "Fiscal Responsibility Summit" with lawmakers, business figures and academics at the White House.
"If we confront this crisis without also confronting the deficits that help cause it, we risk sinking into another crisis down the road," Obama said.
The president said years of deficits would undermine confidence in the US economy, cause interest payments on US debt to rise and saddle future generations of Americans with huge debts.
And he rejected the notion that spending billions of dollars to wake the economy, and cutting deficits were contradictory.
"We chose to move forward on a recovery package because there was a strong sense among the vast majority of economists that if we did not try to fill a one trillion dollar a year hole in demand ... the recession would get worse," he said.
The result he said, would be rising unemployment, falling tax revenues and rising long-term projections for the deficit.
Aides said at the weekend that Obama would cut the deficit with a range of measures, including higher taxes on the wealthiest Americans and less spending on the war in Iraq.
On Tuesday, Obama will take center stage in a primetime address to a joint session of Congress in a priceless opportunity to directly lay out his political program and recovery plans to Americans outside Washington.
On Thursday, the president will take the wraps off his first budget.
Public attempts to curtail runaway budget deficits come with Obama facing a barrage from critics who say the stimulus plan signed into law last week is packed with bloated, budget-busting spending.
The federal budget deficit is already projected to grow to 1.2 trillion dollars this year, without the stimulus spending, and there are fears a new era of mushrooming government debt could undermine economic recovery.
Wall Street indexes on Monday plunged to their lowest close in nearly 12 years on investor disappointment with the latest plan from Washington to prop up the ailing banking system.
Obama and former presidential rival John McCain, meanwhile, had a brief exchange during Monday's summit over the Pentagon budget which led to a humorous exchange over the White House's own fleet of Marine One helicopters.
The issue -- a fleet overhaul for 28 state-of-the-art helicopters at a cost of some 11 billion dollars, according to US media -- came up during the final discussion with lawmakers at a "Fiscal Responsibility Summit."
Obama's Marine One fleet, McCain noted, was set to cost as much as the president's Air Force One aircraft.
To rolling laughter from the audience Obama noted how "the helicopter I have now seems perfectly adequate to me.
"Of course, I've never had a helicopter before. You know? Maybe, maybe I've been deprived and I didn't know it," Obama said.
For fiscal 2009 the Pentagon's basic budget stood at more than 515 billion dollars. For fiscal 2010, plans for which the president will outline this week, the budget will hold a record-busting trillion-dollar deficit.
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Enlarge Photo
US President Barack Obama speaks during the closing of the Fiscal Responsibility Summit in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington. Obama Monday vowed to halve by 2013 the huge budget deficit bequeathed by the Bush White House, warning inaction would leave Americans wallowing in debt and thwarted dreams.
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