that the TPM article links to:
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3036
The Effect of President Obama’s Budget
The key question is: where do we go from here? President Obama’s 2011 budget proposes to reduce anticipated deficits over the next ten years, chiefly by letting the Bush tax cuts for high-income taxpayers expire on schedule, closing certain tax loopholes and reforming the international tax system, keeping estate taxes at their 2009 parameters, enacting health care reform, and freezing (in aggregate) most appropriations for non-security domestic programs for the next three years. The President also supports another round of temporary recovery measures that would boost the deficit in 2010 through 2012, a proposal that is appropriate in size and well targeted. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ analyses have found that in aggregate, the President’s proposals would reduce deficits over the 2011-2020 period by an estimated $1.3 trillion.
Like most fiscal analysts, we believe that the Administration and Congress will need to take considerably larger steps. The President himself acknowledges that his proposals do not fully put the budget on a sustainable footing and has established a bipartisan fiscal commission to recommend more substantial deficit reductions. First and foremost, policymakers will need to restrain the growth of health care costs. The health reform legislation begins that process. It takes important initial steps to restructure the health care payment and delivery systems and to move away from paying providers for more visits or procedures and toward rewarding effective, high-value health care. As we learn more about how to slow health care cost growth without endangering health care quality, strong additional measures will be essential. But restraining health care cost growth will not itself be sufficient to address the long-term fiscal problem. Other actions also will be needed, including steps to raise additional revenue and make changes in other programs.