GOP, deficit hawks pan Obama's $3.9T budget

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GOP, deficit hawks pan Obama's $3.9T budget
By ALAN FRAM
Associated Press
Mar 5, 6:34 AM EST

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans are dismissing President Barack Obama's new $3.9 trillion budget as nothing more than a Democratic manifesto for this fall's congressional campaigns, but the fiscal plan is taking hits from another quarter too - anti-deficit groups.

Obama on Tuesday sent lawmakers a 2015 budget top-heavy with provisions that have little chance of becoming law. They included $1 trillion in tax increases - mostly on the rich and corporations - and a collection of populist but mostly modest spending boosts for consumer protection, climate change research and improved technology in schools.

It even trumpeted $2.2 trillion in 10-year deficit reduction, though most of the proposed savings, including fresh tax boosts plus cuts in government payments to Medicare providers, seemed long shots to make it through Congress. Almost one-third came from claiming savings from the end of U.S. fighting in Iraq and troop withdrawals from Afghanistan.

That meant the budget's clearest impact was political: feeding Democrats' election-year narrative that they are trying to help narrow the income gap between rich and poor while creating jobs. Republicans, who see tax cuts as the surest way to help the economy, pounced.