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The President has a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion, and Obama will insist the changes happen in a “balanced way” which includes revenue increases, McDonough said on ABC’s This Week.
“This is not an ideological effort,” McDonough said. “This should not be a social science experiment. This should be a question where we ask ourselves, what is most important to the economy? What is most important to the middle-class families of this country?”
The US economy stalled during the last three months of 2012, marking the worst quarter since the recession ended three and a half years ago, as defence spending tumbled by the most since 1972. Without action by Congress, the federal government is poised next month to begin the first round of $1 trillion in Budget cuts set to occur over the next nine years, adding another potential drag to the economy.
On immigration, McDonough defended a draft White House proposal that would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for legal status to stay in the country and eventually become citizens. Senator Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, told the newspaper USA Today that the plan was “half-baked” and “dead on arrival in Congress”.
The Obama administration is talking to all the parties involved and is anxious to see a congressional proposal it could work with, McDonough said.
“He says it’s dead on arrival,” McDonough said. “Let’s make sure it doesn’t have to be proposed.”
