Barack Obama, Federal Budget | featured news

Wednesday morning, President Barack Obama became the first Democratic president ever to propose cutting Social Security. Democrats spend so much time defending the president, it is easy to forget that even the most beloved presidents make mistakes and missteps. His new budget, which proposes a new method of calculating inflation increases in Social Security payments, is a doozy.

President Barack Obama unveiled his proposed Fiscal Year 2014 budget plan Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden, offering a combination of new spending initiatives and tax increases aimed at creating jobs and reducing future budget deficits. In his remarks, Obama called his plan “a fiscally responsible blueprint for middle-class jobs and growth.”

South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham on Sunday became the first prominent Republican to publicly praise, however lukewarmly, the budget proposal the White House outlined last week. Graham said that while he believes President Barack Obama's plan is overall bad for the economy, "there are nuggets of his budget that I think are optimistic," and that could set the stage for a broad bargain to put the nation's finances on a stronger footing. He was speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press" program.

President Barack Obama’s proposed budget will call for reductions in the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs by including a proposal to lower cost-of-living adjustments to government social safety net spending, a senior administration official says.

US President Barack Obama appeals for private funds for infrastructure projects, in a bid to create jobs without adding to the budget deficit.

President Obama signed a spending bill Tuesday that headed off a government shutdown.

The wrangling of President Barack Obama and congressional Republicans over the federal budget underscores a clash of core philosophies about how the economy works that supersedes any skirmish on taxes or spending cuts.

The Republicans used their Saturday radio address to pressure President Obama over possible defense cuts.

President Obama told congressional leaders Tuesday that he is extending a two-year pay freeze for federal employees until at least next spring because Congress has not agreed on a budget for the next fiscal year.

"In another attempt to re-fight the battles of the past, one former Bush administration official is wrongly claiming that some of the savings in the Affordable Care Act are 'double-counted' and that the law actually increases the deficit," said Jeanne Lambrew, a deputy assistant to the president for health policy. "This claim is false."