Speaking at a school in Baltimore, Maryland, the president said that his proposed budget will allow him to keep his promise to cut the nation's budget deficit by half at the end of his first term in office, which has two years to run.
Obama called his new budget one of "tough choices and sacrifices," but most of those cuts would be held off until after the end of his first term.
Overall, the president proposed trimming the deficits by $1.1 trillion over a decade although his changes would actually add to the deficits this year and next. Obama is projecting the deficit will hit an all-time high of $1.65 trillion this year and then drop sharply to $1.1 trillion in 2012, with an expected improvement in the economy and as reductions in Social Security withholding and business taxes disappear.