Federal Budget, Trillion | featured news

Republicans are ready to ram through the House an election-year, $3.5 trillion budget that showcases their deficit-cutting plan for revamping Medicare and slicing everything from food stamps to transportation while rejecting President Barack Obama's call to raise taxes on the rich....

The federal government recorded a $1.3 trillion budget deficit in fiscal 2011, the same as the previous fiscal year, the Congressional Budget Office said.

The federal deficit will hit $1.3 trillion for fiscal 2011, the third consecutive year of record shortfalls and an emerging campaign theme for GOP attacks on President Obama and congressional Democrats. The deficits of the last three years are at levels unseen since World War II and stem from the "long shadow" cast on the economy by the financial crisis and recession, the Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday.

The Senate gave final approval Tuesday to legislation to raise the nation's debt limit by $2.4 trillion while cutting federal deficits, sending President Obama a hard-fought bipartisan package he was expected to swiftly sign into law.

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president s debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.