WASHINGTON (AP) – The deficit is dead. Long live the deficit.
As the nation’s ledger adjusts to decreasing levels of deficit spending, the voices in Washington calling for austerity are barely audible. Republicans want more defense spending. Democrats want more domestic spending. And President Barack Obama wants both.
For the first time since the 2011 Budget Control Act put in place a series of automatic spending cuts, Obama might be in the best bargaining position to move the debate his way. And that’s with Republicans in charge of Congress.
Obama on Thursday called for a 7 percent boost in government spending that would nullify those 2011 so-called sequestration cuts and increase domestic and defense spending by a total of $74 billion in nearly equal amounts.
“Let’s make sure that we end this across-the-board sequester that doesn’t differentiate between smart government spending and dumb government spending,” he told a gathering of Democratic lawmakers in Philadelphia.