Obama Budget Plan Protects Families and Seniors

David Streeter — April 13, 2011 – 3:42 pm | Barack Obama | Domestic Policy | Economy | Health Care Comments (0) Add a comment

President Barack Obama delivered an address today that laid out his budget plan for 2012 as well as his plan for decreasing the national debt over time. In stark contrast to the proposals contained in the Congressional Republicans’ budget, Obama made commitments to protecting the major social safety net programs that seniors and families depend on and that are supported by the majority of American Jews.

At the outset of his speech and throughout his speech, Obama countered a number of the flawed arguments, plans, and criticisms about debt reduction advanced by certain partisans and ideologues from across the political spectrum. Obama spoke specifically about the canard of eliminating foreign aid - which would cause major harm to Israel’s security:

[P]oliticians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse -that tackling the deficit issue won’t require tough choices. Or they suggest that we can somehow close our entire deficit by eliminating things like foreign aid, even though foreign aid makes up about 1% of our entire budget. 

So here’s the truth. Around two-thirds of our budget is spent on Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and national security. Programs like unemployment insurance, student loans, veterans’ benefits, and tax credits for working families take up another 20%.  What’s left, after interest on the debt, is just 12 percent for everything else. That’s 12 percent for all of our other national priorities like education and clean energy; medical research and transportation; food safety and keeping our air and water clean.

Up until now, the cuts proposed by a lot of folks in Washington have focused almost exclusively on that 12%. But cuts to that 12% alone won’t solve the problem. So any serious plan to tackle our deficit will require us to put everything on the table, and take on excess spending wherever it exists in the budget. A serious plan doesn’t require us to balance our budget overnight - in fact, economists think that with the economy just starting to grow again, we will need a phased-in approach - but it does require tough decisions and support from leaders in both parties. And above all, it will require us to choose a vision of the America we want to see five and ten and twenty years down the road. 

A key component of Obama’s debt reduction plan focuses on reducing wasteful health care spending by augmenting the responsible spending and debt-reducing proposals contained in the Affordable Care Act—the health care reform package past last March. He refuted a number of GOP claims related to health care reform and exposed the GOP’s misguided plans to roll back health care spending.

Obama said of the Congressional Republican’s budget plan for health care:

[T]heir plan lowers the government’s health care bills by asking seniors and poor families to pay them instead. Our approach lowers the government’s health care bills by reducing the cost of health care itself. 

Obama also said of the GOP’s plan for Medicare:

[The Congressional Republican budget] says America can’t afford to keep the promise we’ve made to care for our seniors. It says that ten years from now, if you’re a 65 year old who’s eligible for Medicare, you should have to pay nearly $6,400 more than you would today. It says instead of guaranteed health care, you will get a voucher. And if that voucher isn’t worth enough to buy insurance, tough luck - you’re on your own. Put simply, it ends Medicare as we know it. 

Obama unequivocally pledged to protect Medicare and health care reform as part of his plan to reduce the debt: 

I will preserve these health care programs as a promise we make to each other in this society. I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations. 

Obama’s other steps for reducing the debt include responsible spending cuts and shifting investments in discretionary spending, responsible cuts to the defense budget that have the full support of America’s military leaders, and simplifying the tax code to benefit America’s families.

With his latest proposal, Obama has demonstrated yet again that his policies align with the values of the vast majority of American Jews.

More information on Obama’s plan is available here.

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