Barry, the Deficit Slayer

Obama to (try to) end the Bush-era tax cuts as he gets set to unveil his deficit buster.

Have you ever read Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections? It's about a 21st century American family coming to terms with their upbringing and their various resolutions to “correct” the lessons of their overbearing father (and the pharmaceutical industry, and the culinary world, and other white people problems), all of which is to say, it looks like Barack Obama's been reading himself some Franzen. The U.S. president is set to unveil a deficit-slaying package today that will likely repeal the Bush era tax cuts for the wealthy and add about $1 trillion to state coffers as U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan comes to an end. (Oh, there's also about $580 billion to be cut from Medicare and other government programs, but you can't win 'em all.) All told, Obama's 10-year plan aims to cut about $4 trillion from the deficit, although his plan will likely look markedly different by the time Congress is done with it (those tax cuts, in particular, will probably get as far as that whole “shutting down Guantanamo” thing). Either way, though, this proposal, along with Obama's American Job Act (U.S.A.! U.S.A!), are the election documents. 2012, here we come.