3.73 TRILLION

This is completely out of control:

President Barack Obama is sending Congress a $3.73 trillion spending blueprint that pledges $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade through spending cuts and tax increases.

Obama’s new budget projects that the deficit for the current year will surge to an all-time high of $1.65 trillion. That reflects a sizable tax-cut agreement reached with Republicans in December. For 2012, the administration sees the imbalance declining to $1.1 trillion, giving the country a record four straight years of $1 trillion-plus deficits.

Jacob Lew, Obama’s budget director, said that the president’s spending proposal was a balanced package of spending cuts and “shared sacrifice” that would bring the deficits under control. Appearing on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Lew said that Obama’s budget would “stand the test that we live within our means and we invest in the future.”

Senior administration officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity in advance of the formal release of the budget, said that Obama would achieve two-thirds of his projected $1.1 trillion in deficit savings through spending cuts including a five-year freeze on many domestic programs.

The other one-third of the savings would come from tax increases, including limiting tax deductions for high income taxpayers, a proposal Obama put forward last year only to have it rejected in Congress.

The Obama budget recommendation, which is certain to be changed by Congress, would spend $3.73 trillion in the 2012 budget year, which begins Oct. 1, a reduction of 2.4 percent from what Obama projects will be spent in the current budget year.

Memo to GOP: Cut, cut, cut, slash, burn, cut...and don't stop until this thing is balanced. We can't pile up trillion dollar deficits for years on end - it just has to stop.

Jim Geraghty adds this:

In a way, this might be a defining moment of Obama's term; if, as hinted, Obama will offer mere millions in budget cuts, it will be clear that Obama doesn't actually care much about the deficit. Shrinking it doesn't really fit in with the grandiose, expansive vision of government laid out in his books, and so he'll choose the much more appealing alternative of ignoring it and letting the Republicans look like Grinches and Scrooges, and then reaping the political benefits himself.

That's the plan, I guarantee it.