Obama Kicks Off Budget Showdown

In his weekly address Saturday, President Obama offered the first round of an impending political brawl over the 2012 fiscal-year budget. Obama outlined the White House's strategy for reducing the nation's deficit with a budget proposing to save an estimated $400 billion in the coming decade. His plan, which he will formally propose Monday, reflects the five-year domestic-spending freeze introduced last month in his State of the Union address. It would reduce non-security domestic spending to the lowest level since President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, Obama said. He also pushed Republicans to work with him on a compromise to rein in future entitlement spending and to reexamine the tax code. The budget will purportedly force the government, now running annual deficits averaging $1 trillion, to "live within its means."