The Obama administration wants to cut the budget deficit in half

This is a news report by the New York Times

In parsing the article, a host of good things emerge that the Obama administration wants to look into to cut the deficit.

  • Repeal Bush Tax Cuts
  • Examine Privatization of Military, Contractors
  • Withdraw from Iraq
  • tax private equity and hedge funds at income level rates
  • cutting out private health insurers government subsidies when seniors would already by covered by Medicare
  • create revenue from permits for excessive greenhouse gas emissions

Lookin' good, trimming the fat and no privatization of social security mentioned or reduction of social safety nets.

I would suggest the Obama administration examine corporate offshore tax havens as well as incorporation offshore for tax purposes. Let's call it the global corporate tax shell game.

The official plan will be released on Thursday.

Mr. Obama’s budget outline, which he will release on Thursday, will also confirm his intention to deliver this year on ambitious campaign promises on health care and energy policy.

Mr. Obama inherited a deficit for 2009 of about $1.2 trillion, which will rise to more than $1.5 trillion, given initial spending from his recently enacted stimulus package. His budget blueprint for the 2010 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, will include a 10-year projection showing the annual deficit declining to $533 billion in the 2013 fiscal year, the last year of his term, officials said. A reduction of that magnitude would more than meet Mr. Obama's deficit reduction goal.

Measured against the size of the economy, that would mean a reduction from a deficit equal to more than 10 percent of gross domestic product — larger than any deficit since World War II — to 3 percent, which is the level that economists generally consider sustainable. Mr. Obama will project deficits at about that level through 2019, aides said.

Even more scary, Obama is going to remove some of the tricks and games the Bush administration did to make the deficit look smaller than it really is, #1 being counting the costs of war.

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