U.S. President Barack Obama sent Congress a $3.9-trillion budget Tuesday that would funnel money into road building, education and other economy-bolstering programs, handing Democrats a playbook for their election-year themes of creating jobs and narrowing the income gap between rich and poor.
The blueprint for fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, is laden with populist proposals designed to fortify those goals. It includes new spending for pre-school education and job training, expanded tax credits for 13.5 million low-income workers without children and more than $1 trillion U.S. in higher taxes over the next decade, mostly for the wealthiest Americans and corporations.
With one eye on job creation, $302 billion U.S. would be spent to upgrade roads, railroads and mass transit, with more money aimed at improvements at Veterans Affairs hospitals and national parks. Additional funds would be aimed at clean energy research, creating 45 public-private manufacturing institutes for spurring innovation and training workers whose companies have closed or moved.
To help pay for those initiatives and others and trim federal deficits as well, Obama relies in part on higher revenue.
He would raise $651 billion U.S. by limiting tax deductions for the nation's highest earners and with a "Buffett tax" — named for billionaire Warren Buffett — slapping minimum levies on the highest-earning people. Taxes would also be raised on large estates, financial institutions, tobacco products, airline passengers and managers of private investment funds.
Congress has ignored those revenue proposals and many of Obama's spending ideas before. With the entire House and one-third of the Senate facing re-election in November, campaign-year pressures and gridlock between the Democratic-led Senate and Republican dominated House of Representatives all but ensure that few of the president's initiatives will go far.
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