10 things Obama would do without GOP opposition

Adding insult to White House injury, spending announcements that would have made waves in the first year of Obama’s administration are likely to quickly dissolve into saturation coverage of the New Hampshire presidential primary, which also takes place on Tuesday.

“Nothing in the president’s prior budgets – none of which have ever balanced – has shown that the Obama administration has any real interest in actually solving our fiscal challenges or saving critical programs like Medicare and Social Security from insolvency”, House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) said.

The tax on oil would raise $319bn over 10 years.

The fiscal plan calls for new taxes on the wealthy to pay for spending on clean energy, education and infrastructure.

Mr. Obama said his budget reflected priorities that would “advance security and prosperity in America for many years to come”. John Hoeven said in a statement. It also seeks to cut deficits by $2.9 trillion over the coming decade through reforms in health programmes, the tax code, and immigration.

The $4.1 trillion annual budget plan – almost always deemed “dead on arrival” to the Republican-controlled Congress – appeared particularly lifeless this year: Republicans said before the document even arrived they would break the long precedent of hearing from the President’s budget chief as they draft their own fiscal blueprint.

The budget also includes more than $100 million for several federal agencies to support planning and infrastructure in high-need villages, according to the White House.

The proposal would also raise gross federal debt to $20.1 trillion, with that number estimated to exceed $27.4 trillion by 2026.

The proposal comes after the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated soaring deficits and debt for the next decade.

When President Obama submitted his proposed budget one year ago, he claimed that he wanted to do away with the “mindless austerity” of the sequestration, which had provided some measure of limitation on government spending.

In a sign of how bad relations are between the president and Congress, Rep. Price and his Senate counterpart Mike Enzi did not invite the administration’s budget director to testify before their committees. This new investment includes the full funding for an effort to cure cancer.

The president’s budget message reads like his State of the Union addresses, espousing his wish list, from “green energy” subsidies to universal preschool to high-speed rail and increased transit funding to $4 billion for a K-12 computer science program to two years of “free” community college to apprenticeship programs to “encouraging” state paid leave policies – none of which is the province of federal, state and local governments. This isn’t even a budget so much as it is a progressive manual for growing the federal government at the expense of hardworking Americans. Obama says putting aside austerity let’s his budget work for the country, not against it.

At the same time, the administration is seeking $1.8 billion in emergency appropriations to respond to the Zika virus overseas and prepare for its spread in the United States.