Obama's budget

I just wrote my Republican Senator John Ensign to urge him to support Obama's proposed budget. It's time to make some needed and overdue investments in energy, healthcare, and education.

You can find detailed information about Obama's budget at the Office of Managent and Budget's website. Peter Orszag, the OMB's director, has posted his first blog post:

This Budget puts us back on a road toward economic and fiscal health by:

Being honest. If this Budget used the gimmicks employed in recent budgets, it would show a bottom line that would appear about $2.7 trillion better over ten years. For example, these other budgets didn’t include the likely cost of natural disasters or the cost of permanently continuing the temporary patch that prevents millions of Americans from paying the Alternative Minimum Tax. Using gimmicks may make good politics temporarily, but it doesn’t help move the nation forward.

Cutting the deficit in half by the end of the President’s first term. We inherited a deficit of $1.3 trillion or 9% of GDP in fiscal 2009. Even though we increase the 2009 deficit to give the economy a desperately needed jolt, over subsequent years we reduce the deficit by more than half by 2013, the end of the president’s first term: to $533 billion or 3.0% of GDP. As I mentioned above, we inherited a path of projected deficits adding up to $9 trillion over the next ten years – and our policy proposals will reduce those projected deficits by more than $2 trillion.

Reforming health care. At the President’s direction, we have begun the process of doing a line-by-line review of the Budget. One of the lines we’ve started with is among the most important to the budget and to many other aspects of our economy: health care.

As I have long said, health care is the key to our nation’s fiscal future – and there are substantial efficiency improvements that are possible to deliver better results at lower costs in the health system.... This proposal is a starting point, not an ending point, for health reform as additional resources will be needed to improve and expand health care for all Americans.

Making key investments. The Budget also makes key investments in education, energy, and infrastructure. It invests in early childhood education;makes Pell Grants for college into a reliable source of support for students and indexes their value above the ordinary rate of inflation so as to better keep up with the rapidly rising cost of college tuition; and helps at-risk students complete college. The Budget also lays down a comprehensive approach to transform our energy supply and slow global climate change. And it makes infrastructure investments that will provide our nation a foundation for long-term economic growth.

Good governance is a two-way street. Learn about the budget. Read the White House and OMB blogs. And contact your own members of Congress here: Senate and House.