Essay On Government Article

Fresh off the State of the Union, President Obama must now start addressing the specific policies he recommended during the speech. This involves setting a budget for the next fiscal year. Today, Obama proposed a $4 trillion budget for 2016 in attempt to accomplish the goals he promised to the middle class workers in America. Obama’s plan appears to foresee a $474 billion deficit, while addressing many areas the Democrats have wanted to focus on for the last couple years, such as corporate tax rates and infrastructure reform. This budget would slightly reduce the deficit from last year. If Obama’s long term budget were to be approved, it is expected that he would achieve approximately $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction over ten years. These would happen through things like healthcare savings, tax reform, and immigration changes (Weisman, 2015).
Obama projects the unemployment rate to fall slightly, from 5.6 percent to 5.4. Obama wants to set aside $14 billion to help US cybersecurity, as hacking is a major threat right now to national defense. He would also seek to strengthen defense by increasing military spending by 7 percent. However, Obama also put into place caps on military spending, despite the small increase. Finally, Obama calls for a 14 percent tax on major companies like General Electric and Microsoft who stash money in overseas accounts. It would be a one-time tax, which would go against an estimated $2.1 trillion in profits. Obama does intend to increase entitlement spending, such as Social Security and Medicare (Weisman, 2015).
Given all these items, there are some problems with the budget Obama has proposed. He assumes Republicans will join in support for many of his infrastructure reforms, and getting bipartisan support is key to Obama’s long term deficit reduction program. Bipartisan support is unlikely because the bill assumes that an immigration reform package, much like ones proposed by Democrats, will be passed. Obviously, this is something that is unlikely to happen, especially given that the Republicans currently control Congress. Furthermore, Obama is proposing increased taxes on major corporations, another unlikely and unpopular request with the Republicans in charge. Entitlement reform is something the Republicans would like to see, but Obama does nothing to address this issue. This leads to the question of why Obama is proposing a budget unlikely to be passed by the current Congress.
It is likely that Obama is preparing for yet another political fight with the Republicans and could be wagering with another potential government shutdown. This will be interesting to see how it plays out in the future because government shutdown are terrible for public opinion, and whatever party is blamed has the potential to suffer severe political consequences. More than likely, Obama is proposing a budget that he sees will help strengthen the middle class. He is trying to tax big corporations while still spending more on entitlements. Obama also wants to strengthen roads and come to a resolution on immigration. These ideas and policies are things that resonate with the middle class, and Obama is likely trying to contrast this with the Republicans ideology. Obama is trying to show how he is for the people, while Republicans still have big corporations in mind, not that of the middle class. Whether or not this political strategy pays off or not for Obama will be interesting to follow in the next months as he tours the country promoting the 2016 budget.

Works Cited

Weisman, Jonathan. "Obama’s Budget: Beyond the Boldness, Nuggets With G.O.P. Appeal." The New York Times, 2 Feb. 2015. Web. 2 Feb. 2015. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/03/us/obamas-budget.html?_r=0>.