Amid a flurry of briefings and backgrounders by the White House’s top economic advisers, the administration released President Barack Obama’s final budget proposal on Tuesday.
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Obama’s budget includes $19 billion for a broad new cybersecurity initiative, a $10-a-barrel fee on oil, and $1 billion for a cancer “moonshot” program led by Vice President Joe Biden.
“The budget is a roadmap to a future that embodies America’s values and aspirations: a future of opportunity and security for all of our families; a rising standard of living; and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids”, Obama said in a letter sent to the Congress on Tuesday.
As MSNBC pointed out on February 9, it’s been commonplace since the 1970s for the Office of Management and Budget Director to deliver the budget in full to Congress. The House and Senate typically sets up a hearing in Congress, as both sides make their case for or against the proposal.
The president’s budget proposal will also call for $62 million to expand efforts to attract and retain qualified cyber professionals working for the government, with things like student loan forgiveness and the creation of a CyberCorps Reserve program, where Americans can obtain college scholarships if they pursue technical jobs in government.
While the size of IT budget increases in Obama’s request, the administration is pushing several initiatives to lower the cost of IT procurement, including “Buying as One” – leveraging the full buying power of the vast federal government – and “Software Reuse and Open Source” – ensuring agencies aren’t buying the same software many times over.
However, the chairman of the House of Representatives’ Budget Committee, Congressman Tom Price, said Republicans will draft their own spending plan. “This isn’t even a budget so much as it is a progressive manual for growing the federal government at the expense of hardworking Americans”.
As a lame duck president, Obama doesn’t have much to lose and could accomplish more if he can find allies in Congress to compromise on the more moderate proposals. In the plan, the federal deficit over the next decade would average 2.6 percent of gross domestic product, the same as its share of the economy for fiscal 2017.
In an opinion piece Tuesday in The Wall Street Journal, Obama said, “These cyber threats are among the most urgent dangers to America’s economic and national security”. It also includes $375 billion in savings on federal health-care spending.
The budget year begins October 1, 2016, although it is highly doubtful that this budget will even be evaluated by Congress, let alone passed. He said he’d already spoken to House Speaker Paul Ryan about ways Republicans and Democrats could work together.
“Our Social Security system still runs on a COBOL platform that dates back to the 60’s”, the president said.
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“It appears the president’s final budget will continue to focus on new spending proposals instead of confronting our government’s massive overspending and debt”, Enzi said in a joint statement with Price.
