Barack Obama has called on Congress to create a budgetary straitjacket that would restrict future deficits, as part of a sweeping plan to rein in US debt through a mixture of spending cuts and tax increases.
In a speech on Wednesday, the US president proposed cutting $4,000bn from deficits in the next 12 years, shrinking discretionary spending and the defence budget, and reducing government outlays to Medicare and Medicaid, the largest federal healthcare programmes.
The target is roughly in line with the $4,400bn in deficit reductions over a decade that Republicans in House of Representatives proposed last week and the $3,900bn in cuts by 2020 recommended by the bipartisan fiscal commission in December.
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