Deficit ‘grand bargain’ may be out of reach, says US president

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama yesterday diminished the prospects for a grand bargain with Congress on reducing the deficit, saying the gap between the two parties may be “too wide.”
Obama’s Democrats are pushing for what they describe as a balanced approach to deficit reduction, including targeted spending cuts and new tax revenue to help pare down the $ 16 trillion national debt, while Republicans demand dramatic cuts to federal spending, reform of entitlements and no new taxes.
“Ultimately, it may be that the differences are just too wide,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News that aired early yesterday.
“It may be that ideologically, if their position is, ‘we can’t do any revenue,’ or, ‘we can only do revenue if we gut Medicare or gut Social Security or gut Medicaid,’ if that’s the position, then we’re probably not going to be able to get a deal.”
Obama’s comments come ahead of his yesterday meeting with Republicans in the House of Representatives, part of his outreach to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle this week after Congress failed to prevent billions of dollars in across-the-board federal spending cuts.
Last week Obama dined with several Republican senators, and on Tuesday had lunch with Senate Democrats in the US Capitol. Today he will do the same with Senate Republicans.
But amid the congeniality, the two political parties have spelled out the gap between them this week in the form of starkly different budget proposals.
Republican House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan unveiled his plan that would slash spending by $ 4.6 trillion, including major cuts to health care spending, reduce the top tax rate to 25 percent, and balance the budget in 10 years.
His Democratic counterpart in the Senate Budget Committee, chairwoman Patty Murray, is unveiling her own plan yesterday that includes nearly $ 2 trillion in deficit reduction — evenly split between new revenue through the closure of tax loopholes, and targeted spending.
Obama acknowledged in the interview that while the Democrat plan aims at fiscal stability and protects healthcare for the poor and the elderly, it does not balance the budget any time soon.
“My goal is not to chase a balanced budget just for the sake of balance. My goal is, how do we grow the economy, put people back to work, and if we do that we are going to be bringing in more revenue,” he told ABC.