Monday, February 1st, 2010 at 10:00 am
Introducing the 2011 Budget
Peter R. Orszag, Director
Today, the President transmitted the FY 2011 Budget to the Congress. In about an hour, he will deliver remarks about the Budget, and after that I will be taking questions from the press with CEA Chair Romer. This post gives readers of OMBlog a brief overview of the document.
After a year in which we took immediate and unprecedented action to rescue the economy from the brink of a second Great Depression, the FY 2011 Budget takes steps to jumpstart job creation, strengthen the economic security of middle-class families, and make the tough choices to put our Nation back on the path to fiscal sustainability.
When the President took office, the economy was on the brink of a depression. The economic crisis required that we take immediate and extraordinary steps to prevent a complete economic collapse that would have caused millions more to lose their jobs.
Not all of the efforts we undertook to avoid a deeper recession were popular. Nonetheless the President did what was right for our country’s future: signing into law the Recovery Act to jumpstart economic growth and taking steps to prevent the collapse of the financial system.
A year later, the economy is back from the brink – and is growing again. This "statistical recovery," however, is cold comfort for the millions of Americans who have lost their job.
The President has therefore called for a package to spur job creation now – including small business tax cuts and investments in clean energy and infrastructure.
To sustain job creation and economic growth into the years ahead and provide room for the private sector to expand, we are also making tough choices in the Budget: cutting what doesn’t work or isn’t necessary and investing in what will help to expand the economy and employment in the coming years.
The Budget thus institutes a three-year non-security discretionary freeze that will save $250 billion over the next decade.
We're not putting forward an across-the-board freeze, but rather an overall cap on non-security discretionary funding in which key investments are expanded but we cut back on programs that are ineffective, duplicative, or just wasteful.
As part of that overall effort, we identified more than 120 programs across the government that should be terminated or reduced – generating $20 billion in savings.
At the same time, we are making critical investments in the areas critical to building a strong economy in the 21st century.
That is why we increase funding at the Department of Education by $2.9 billion or 6.2 percent, make the largest proposed request for Elementary and Secondary Education Act programs while reforming it to be more effective, and provide more money for Pell grants and Race to the Top.
To build a more modern infrastructure, the Budget establishes a new $4 billion dollar National Infrastructure Innovation & Finance Fund to focus on infrastructure investments of national and regional significance.
To help put the nation at the top of the pack when it comes to the new clean energy economy, the Budget includes more than $6 billion in funding for clean energy technologies while also eliminating existing fossil fuel subsidies.
And to continue our country’s proud, innovative history, the Budget invests $61.6 billion for civilian research and development – an increase of $3.7 billion, or 6.4 percent, over 2010 levels.
As we focus our efforts on spurring job creation and jumpstarting economic growth, we also have to change business as usual in Washington and restore fiscal responsibility.
Because of the irresponsibility of the past decade, we’ve seen a projected 10-year surplus of over $5 trillion at the end of the Clinton administration turn into a projected 10-year deficit of over $8 trillion the day President Obama took office.
