Obama to release $4 trillion-plus budget for 2017

At left is Vice President Joe Biden.

Obama’s budget outlines his “final vision of how he lays out the fiscal future for the country”, said Joel Friedman, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ vice president for federal fiscal policy, to Reuters.

The plan also proposes $19 billion to improve the government’s cyberdefenses, $19 billion to fund NASA, $11 billion to fight the Islamic State group, $3.4 billion to improve European defenses in order to discourage Russian aggression, $3.1 billion for technology modernization at various agencies and $1 billion for cancer research.

The Republican-controlled House and Senate Budget Committees also said in a joint Thursday statement that they wouldn’t be inviting Obama’s budget director to Capitol Hill to discuss the president’s budget. House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan also made his voice heard, referring to Obama’s budget as a “progressive manual for growing the federal government”, writing it off as dead on arrival.

Ryan, R-Wisconsin, pledged that House Republicans would produce a budget that does reach balance in coming weeks.

“It drives down the deficit”. That includes some rosy assumptions, though, about tax revenues, health care savings and immigration reform.

Last week a White House official said the tax would be applied to oil that is consumed in the United States, including imports, but not to crude shipped overseas.

“This budget is not about looking back at the road we have traveled”, Obama said.

The deficit is set to rise to $616 billion this year after the White House and Congress approved a generous tax and spending accord last December.

The president’s proposed budget is paid in part by raising taxes on wealthy Americans. That’s not completely surprising in an election year, especially since the two parties have been sharply divided during the presidential nominating season with regard to their vision for the future of the country. “That may be an indication that they want to avoid some tough questions about their budget priorities, and they’re taking a page from Donald Trump’s playbook and ducking the tough questions”.

That break with tradition highlights the antipathy that the Republican-led Congress feels toward the president’s fiscal plan, which would go into effect on October 1. “Are they going to use their majority in Congress to strengthen our cyber security, to fight opioid addiction, to cure cancer, or are they not?” he said. She pointed to a funding proposal for Alaskans affected by climate change that harkens a bill she passed out of the energy committee previous year, her efforts to acquire a new polar icebreaker and a boost to the state’s share of the military’s construction budget.

The proposal has already seen strong pushback from Republicans.

Large financial institutions would also be hit with a new fee created to generate revenue. President Barack Obama has proposed $1.8 billion to combat the Zika virus which is spreading rapidly through Latin America and is suspected of causing a devastating birth defect ¿ babies born with abnormally small heads. An additional $59 billion was requested by the administration for Overseas Contingency Operations fund, remaining consistent with the 2016 fiscal year levels.