Washington, April 11: Following a near shutdown of the US federal government, President Barack Obama is to set out new plans this week in an attempt to reduce the growing US budget deficit.
White House aide Dan Pfeiffer said Obama is to set forth his plans of cutting the country’s deficit on Wednesday, the Associated Press reported.
The new plan comes after the shutdown of the US government was averted by a last-minute budget-cutting compromise between the US incumbent president and the country’s congressional lawmakers before the weekend.
Republicans have offered cuts in benefits for elders, Medicare, and Medicaid funds, a program for low-income people, while Democrats are suggesting cutting the deficit by increasing taxes on the country’s wealthy.
Last week, the Republicans introduced a spending blueprint, which is supposed to cut the US government’s expenditures by some $6 trillion.
Just one hour before the deadline for the federal government shutdown, which was by midnight April 8, both sides agreed on a 39 billion dollar cut over the next six months.
Earlier, Obama said the agreement was the greatest annual spending cut in history, as he called some of the cuts to be ‘painful.’
If an agreement was not met before the deadline, the shutdown would have left some 800,000 federal workers unemployed, while affecting US nationals at home and abroad with heavy cuts in their paychecks.
——–Agencies