Obama Budget - First Read - Jamie Dupree on wsbradio.com

Jamie Dupree
Obama Budget - First Read
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Jamie Dupree
@ February 1, 2010 3:31 PM Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

The $3.8 trillion budget plan for Fiscal Year 2011 from President Obama is now being digested by all of Washington, D.C., and the first review certainly indicates some difficult fights ahead for the White House on a number of fronts.

For example, the programs cuts that I detailed on a previous blog, many of them were submitted last year to Congress, but they were tossed on the Legislative Scrap Heap.

Those include defense programs like the C-17 cargo plane, which Defense Secretary Gates made clear on Monday afternoon that he has no use for, saying he would ask President Obama to veto any defense budget bill with money included for that plane.

The fine print - as always - is the interesting part.

If you go to http://budget.gov and check out some of the details, download the file titled "Analytical Perspectives" to get more information than you ever have wanted about the budget.

On page 185, find Table 14-3, which gives a rundown on the tax revenue proposals in the Obama budget.

You will see a number of tax cuts on page 185, then you start to get into "Loophole Closers" and other ways to raise revenue.

On page 186, there are a series of provisions that would levy new taxes and fees on the oil and gas industry - most of those were in last year's budget, but were never approved by Congress.

At the bottom of page 187, you get to "Upper-Income Tax Provisions," which details several tax increases for top earners, which will raise $969 billion over 10 years (that final figure on page 188.)

Further down the page, you will note a line that says "Health Insurance Reform" - it says that this budget counts on $743 billion in cost savings from health care reform.

Yes, that would be the same health care bill that is currently stuck in the Congress.

What's not in this section this year is very interesting, that subject being climate change legislation.

In last year's budget, there was a section called "Climate Revenues" which was to bring in $623.9 billion over ten years.

But this year, it's not there, as the Obama budget is not including any revenues from the so-called Cap and Trade legislation.

Republican staffers in Congress though accurately pointed out that the budget does express its support for the idea of climate change legislation, but the money is not part of the budget. It could be, if the cap and trade bill passes, but that still seems unlikely.

I've found a few more gems in the fine print, but I have well over a thousand pages still to comb through looking for interesting stuff. I'll try to detail that in the morning.