Bloomberg View: Praise for Obama's Budget

Budgets are part practical blueprint and part political manifesto. Too often, they sacrifice the former for the latter. The Senate’s 2014 budget—its first in five years—won approval only from Democrats because it raised taxes and failed to offer Republicans any cuts to Social Security or Medicare. Meanwhile, only Republicans voted for the more austere plan in the House, which would reach balance by 2023 by whacking domestic programs that Democrats cherish. President Barack Obama’s $3.8 trillion spending plan recognizes the stasis in Washington and presents a way around it. For that alone, he deserves credit.

Obama offers entitlement cuts in exchange for tax increases on the wealthy. This was always going to be the general outline of the compromise, and his quid pro quo is admittedly small beer: He proposes $1.8 trillion in deficit reduction for the next decade, yet much of that would replace the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts that took effect last month. And his entitlement cuts would reduce spending by only $830 billion over 10 years, a piddling amount considering that entitlements are now 60 percent of the federal budget and by 2023 will reach 64 percent—even with Obama’s trims.