Did You Know...

Peter Orszag blogs this morning about the newly unveiled, $3.8 trillion White House budget: “The Budget lays out a plan to put the country back on a sustainable fiscal path.”

Via the House Republicans, this is what the Obama administration’s idea of a “sustainable fiscal path” looks like:

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The WSJ breaks the debt deluge down further:

President Barack Obama will propose on Monday a $3.8 trillion budget for fiscal 2011 that projects the deficit will shoot up to a record $1.6 trillion this year, but would push the red ink down to about $700 billion, or 4% of the gross domestic product, by 2013, according to congressional aides.

The deficit for the current fiscal year, which ends on Sept. 30, would eclipse last year’s $1.4 trillion deficit, in part due to new spending on a proposed jobs package. The president also wants $25 billion for cash-strapped state governments, mainly to offset their funding of the Medicaid health program for the poor.

The president’s $3.8 trillion budget will move deficit levels to an all-time high. The News Hub discusses the budget’s chance for passing Congress.

To get the deficit down by the middle of the decade, Mr. Obama will be relying on some cuts that have previously been proposed without success, on cooperation from a wary Congress and on a yet-to-be set up debt commission to suggest politically difficult choices.

At the same time, Mr. Obama is under pressure to address the country’s continued high unemployment rate. And he will propose increases in spending for priorities such as education and domestic scientific research. All of this raises questions about how much progress the president is likely to make in trying to fulfill his pledge to halve by 2013 the $1.3 trillion deficit he inherited.

During another brief, teleprompter-aided statement this morning, Obama lectured: “‘Changing spending as usual depends on changing politics as usual.”

Waiting…

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Via C-SPAN, here is video of the behemoth budget being trucked in to Capitol Hill: