Barack Obama, Budget Deficit | featured news

President Obama, Governor Schwarzenegger and other esteemed politicos may routinely distance themselves from the potential windfall that would accompany legalizing and taxing cannabis, but amid California's latest and deepest financial crisis the state Board of Equalization has tagged a whopping revenue figure to such a notion.

The Senate's top Democratic on budget issues is scrapping Barack Obama's signature tax $400 tax credit for most workers as he seeks to cut the deficit to sustainable levels.

U.S. congressional analysts are expected on Friday to forecast even more red ink than expected, a record $1.8 trillion deficit for fiscal 2009, which could complicate President Barack Obama's efforts to pass his $3.55 trillion budget plan for 2010.

President Obama is reaching across party lines Monday to host a bipartisan "fiscal responsibility summit" as the government tackles the seemingly contradictory tasks of controlling a soaring federal deficit while spending the country's way out of a deep recession.

Ambitious budget seeks to cut deficit in half in 4 years, largely by raising taxes on businesses, the wealthy, cutting spending in Iraq, Afghanistan.