Obama downplays deficit in SOTU

{mosads}“The President has already laid out a plan to reduce the deficit by more than $4 trillion over the next decade including the over $2 trillion in deficit reduction that the President already signed into law in the Budget Control Act. This would bring the country to a place where current spending is no longer adding to our debt and deficits are at a sustainable level,” it states.

Obama in September laid out the plan and more details may come in the 2013 budget to be unveiled Feb. 13. 

The de-emphasizing of the deficit reflects the election year political reality that a grand deficit bargain is unlikely this year between the White House and Congress. When the focus was on the deficit last summer, Obama’s approval ratings suffered. When the focus turned to efforts to create jobs in the fall, they started to recover. 

During the State of the Union, Obama reiterated that over the summer he was willing to cut a grand deficit bargain with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) including one that cuts the costs of entitlement programs. 

“As I told the Speaker this summer, I’m prepared to make more reforms that rein in the long term costs of Medicare and Medicaid, and strengthen Social Security, so long as those programs remain a guarantee of security for seniors,” Obama said. “But in return, we need to change our tax code so that people like me, and an awful lot of Members of Congress, pay our fair share of taxes.”