President Barack Obama has proposed a budget that would cut the US deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, but Republicans said it did not curb spending deeply enough.
Obama said his plan was a balance between deficit reduction pain and investment for growth. But it provided only a general guide on how to tackle areas including the Social Security and Medicare programmes, which are responsible for huge government spending.
'The fiscal realities we face require hard choices,' he said in a message to Congress accompanying the budget.
'A decade of deficits, compounded by the effects of the recession and the steps we had to take to break it ... has put us on an unsustainable course. That's why my budget lays out a path for how we pay down these debts,' he said.
Obama's $3.729 trillion budget proposal for fiscal 2012 shows the deficit rising to $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, then falling sharply to just over $1.1 trillion in 2012.
This trend would trim the deficit as a share of the US economy to 3.2% by 2015 from 10.9% this year, and meet a pledge Obama made to his Group of 20 partners to halve the deficit by 2013. G20 finance ministers meet in Paris on Friday and Saturday.
The budget shows the deficit steadying at around 3% of gross domestic product from 2015 onward, slowing the rate at which the US adds to its debt, although it will still climb to 77% of GDP by 2021, up from 72% in 2011.
It predicts that the US economy will grow by 3.6% next year - providing a massive boost for tax revenue. But this forecast is much higher than the IMF's projection. The budget also assumes that the US unemployment rate will sink to 8.6% next year, well down from the 9.3% average for this year.
Obama's budget for fiscal 2012 is a proposal to Congress laying out the president's policy priorities.
Months of wrangling will now follow with Republicans in Congress, who control the House of Representatives and increased their seats in the Senate after November elections in which they campaigned on deep cuts in federal spending.
'The president talks like someone who recognises that spending is out of control, but so far it hasn't been matched with action,' US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement.
