Obama Offers Plan to Decrease U.s. Budget Deficit

Appearing on several Sunday morning television talk shows, David Plouffe, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser and former campaign manager, laid out few of the contours of the deficit-cutting plan but sought to distinguish it from a Republican congressional plan announced recently by Paul D. Ryan Jr. of Wisconsin, the chairman of the House budget committee. He said the Republican plan “would give the average millionaire $200,000 in tax cuts” but double the health care costs of senior citizens “$6,000 a year down the road” and trim “energy investment at a time of record gas prices.”

Mr. Plouffe seemed upbeat about the down-to-the-wire plan agreed to Friday night between Republicans and Democrats that would cut this fiscal year’s budget over the remaining six months by $38.5 billion. While it produced more cuts in federal programs than Mr. Obama originally desired, “it preserved things that are important to the president’s plan to win the future — education funding, funding in medical research, other innovation areas,” and avoided “the draconian cuts” the Republicans had sought, he said on “Fox News Sunday.”

On CNN’s “State of the Union,” he also claimed that the deal reached with Republicans protected 800,000 children from being dropped from Head Start, the preschool program for children in poor families, and safeguarded the student loan program.

Republican leaders sounded equally triumphant in their appearances on the Sunday shows and trumpeted their own deficit-reduction plan, which argues that raising taxes on the wealthy would slow down the economy. They pictured Mr. Obama as a reluctant groom at the ceremonies Friday night announcing the compromise.

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“We’ve had to bring this president kicking and screaming to the table to cut spending,” Eric Cantor of Virginia, the leader of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives, said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“They’re insisting that we have to go about looking at raising taxes again, all while holding up the tax agreement that was signed in December,” he said about the Democrats. “So, on one hand, we’re going to defend that tax agreement but then go ahead and violate it.”

Mr. Plouffe presented few details of the steps the president may outline in his deficit-reduction plan, one that would stretch over several years. But he indicated that Mr. Obama would try again to end tax cuts for those earning $250,000 a year that were enacted during the administration of George W. Bush.

“He’ll lay out his approach this week in terms of the scale of debt reduction he thinks the country needs so we can grow economically and win the future, a balanced approach,” Mr. Plouffe said. A White House official said Mr. Obama’s speech would be on Wednesday.

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“Obviously, we need to look at all corners of government,” Mr. Plouffe said. As he said previously, his health care law is $1 trillion in deficit reduction over the next two decades, but we have to do more there. We have to look at more spending here, carefully. As he said, we have to use a scalpel not a machete. And, obviously, this is a distinction with the congressional Republican plan that was announced this week.”

He sounded a conciliatory tone at points, arguing that “what’s clear on deficit reduction, like anything in Washington, if we’re going to make any progress together — whether it’s in education reform, job creation, deficit reduction — the parties are going to have to come together to find common ground. And that’s what happened this week.”