Page 2 - Ink Bill News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Joining me now to discuss all this is the white house budget director, jack lew. mr. lew, thank you so much for being with us. big day, big budget, but you really can't balance the budget by tackling only about 16% of our spending. why didn't you guys take on the really hard stuff, entitlements? >> well, it's good to be with you, jess camp i would challenge the notion that this budget does not solve the problem in the short and the medium term. we've put forward a budget that tackles almost every part of the budget that you just described. it would reduce the deficit to a place in the middle o...

Egypt. from behind his high walls, none confirmed, none denied. that was nic robertson in sharm el sheikh. president obama's budget plan for next year is out. all 2,403 pages of it. but critics are already slamming what they see as weak efforts to tackle the deficit, both on the part of the president and congressional republicans and the debt. and they're asking where are the grown-ups in all this? the president is proposing a $3.7 trillion budget that would cut funding to half of all government agencies to 2010 levels. that includes money for airports, heat subsidies for the poor, water t...

Hardly a lot. the annual deficit, the annual interest payments on the debt will go up, will quadruple over the next ten years. the national debt will go up over $7 trillion. that, jessica, is on optimistic shnz. we just learned from the white house today that the deficit this year is going to be $1.6 trillion. do you know that's 80% more than they were forecasting just two years ago? 80% growth in the deficit for this year and a 90% growth for 2012 over what they forecast two years ago. we're on a bad trajectory here. i'm afraid the budget doesn't solve it. in his defense, i must say they've g...

Something done on some form of entitlement reform. >> we'll put that to our next guest. thank you, gloria borger. let's hear what republican leaders are saying about all of this. congressman jeb hensarling of texas is chairman of the house republican conference. he served on the president's commission on fiscal responsibility and reform, as well. thank you, congressman hensarling for being with us. i want to play you something that the president's budget director, jack lu, told us about this budget. >> i think that we are taking a step today putting a budget out there which frames the issues i...

Of those i just mentioned. let's bring in our white house correspondent dan lothian. the bottom line is despite all of those cuts critics are pouncing. >> reporter: they really are. i should say, first of all, from the president on down and other aides at the white house, they do say there is a lot of pain in this budget, that they did have to make some tough choices, but democrats think that it went too far. some republicans say that it didn't go far enough, especially when it comes to tackling the massive federal deficit. president obama's own debt commission laid out an ominous assessment l...