Obama Pledges to Seek Deficit Cuts

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
NYT

WASHINGTON — President Obama pledged Saturday to look for ways to “cut the trillion-dollar deficit we inherited,” and said he is turning his attention toward restoring discipline to the nation’s budget now that he put forth his housing plan and has signed his $787 billion economic recovery package into law.

After a week dominated by programs that involve spending — in addition to the stimulus package, the plan to stave off foreclosures could cost taxpayers as much as $275 billion — Mr. Obama used Saturday’s weekly address to the nation on Saturday to chart the immediate road ahead: a “fiscal summit” on Monday that will bring together business and union leaders, experts and lawmakers; an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday; and releasing his 2010 budget on Thursday.

“It will require doing all we can to get exploding deficits under control as our economy begins to recover,” the president said, promising to put forth a budget that is “sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline.”

In the address, Mr. Obama touted the stimulus package as “the most sweeping economic recovery plan in history,” saying it would put 3.5 million Americans back to work. In compliance with the tax provisions of the bill, he said the Treasury Department has already begun “directing employers to reduce the amount of taxes withheld from paychecks — meaning that by April 1, a typical family will begin taking home at least $65 more every month.”

(More here.)