BUDGET

Obama Pledges to Tackle Deficit

Endorses Clintonian pay-as-you-go strategy.

President Obama took some heat in the press last week when his plan to cut $100 million in agency spending was widely panned as a drop in an ocean-sized deficit. Bringing up the issue again, President Obama said in his weekly radio address today that rising deficits were indeed a serious concern. "We came into office facing a budget deficit of $1.3 trillion for this year alone, and the cost of confronting our economic crisis is high," Obama said. "But we cannot settle for a future of rising deficits and debts that our children cannot pay." According to Obama, Congress needed to readopt PAYGO, a set of principles used in the 1990s to trim the deficit in which new spending has to be offset either with new taxes or budget cuts elsewhere.