President Barack Obama’s budget isn’t going anywhere on Capitol Hill.
Then again, it’s not really meant to.
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The White House document — price tagged at $ 3.091 trillion — serves a different purpose. It’s packed with political messaging and some of the leading arguments from the Democratic playbook headed into the midterms.
Here are POLITICO’s top five budget takeaways:
1. A middle-class message
Obama’s budget represents a unifying document for Democratic priorities, full of issues that appeal to the middle class and reminders that the economy has turned a corner since the Great Recession.
(PHOTOS: What’s in Obama’s 2015 budget?)
Featured prominently near the beginning of the budget is a letter from Obama highlighting how his administration has presided over a solid number of new housing starts, rosy unemployment rates and a shrinking deficit.
“It’s a road map for creating jobs with good wages and expanding opportunity for all Americans,” Obama said in introducing the budget at a Washington elementary school.
It’s also full of red meat for Obama’s Democratic base.
Minimum wage increase to $ 10.10? Check. Big boosts to education funding? Check. Obamacare money? Check.
The proposal to expand the Earned Income Tax Credit is also squarely aimed at the middle class — “Right now, it helps about half of all parents in America at some point in their lives,” Obama said. And to pay for it? “Closing loopholes like the ones that let wealthy individuals classify themselves as a small business to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.”
His budget is also another chance to highlight the end of the war in Afghanistan at the beginning of 2015 by pointing to the potential cost savings. No matter that the Pentagon doesn’t yet have all the answers on the long-term costs as the U.S. keeps a contingent of troops in Afghanistan.
2. Glass is half-full
Obama’s budget is also an invitation for fact checkers — especially his letter to lawmakers at the start of the document celebrating just how great the country is doing after almost six years in office.
(WATCH: Obama’s full 2015 budget remarks)
More than 8 million new jobs created in the last four years: That’s correct, except he’s counting from the low point in his presidency and leaves out how there are still 1.2 million fewer jobs than when the recession started in December 2007.
The housing market is rebounding: Sure, the trends have been good for many parts of the country, but market experts are also quick to note that the industry is really just getting back to where it was before the 1999 start of the up-and-down cycle. Some alarming signs are appearing, too, from rising interest rates to tightened inventory and new concerns about affordability.
The U.S. is a net exporter of oil thanks to a major spike in domestic production, for the first time since 1995: It is indeed a good time to be in the fossil fuel business, but that’s thanks almost entirely to private industry development and much less because of Obama’s policies.
3. Goodbye, crisis government
The budget is like a greatest-hits album of talking points about the damage that’s been done from Washington’s repeated descents into dysfunction.
It cites a Congressional Budget Office report showing that sequestration cost the country 750,000 jobs and the Office of Management and Budget’s finding that October’s partial government shutdown led to billions of dollars in lost productivity.
“These self-inflicted economic wounds must stop,” Obama’s budget says, with a reminder of the hit from sequester and the shutdown on troops, women, seniors and the poor.
Thanks to election year realities, Obama’s plea for some normalcy appears likely to happen. Republicans took a hit from the shutdown and have helped lock in overall spending caps for 2014 and 2015. Sequestration isn’t scheduled to return until 2016. And the debt limit is on a glide path through early next year.
Obama’s budget does also note that crisis government wasn’t all bad. After all, it did help shrink the deficit — it’s fallen by half as a share of gross domestic product — thanks in large part to … sequestration.
4. Zombie policies
Some Obama proposals just don’t know when to call it a day — no matter how many times lawmakers say no.
Back for a repeat performance in Tuesday’s budget: Calls to eliminate $ 4 billion a year in tax breaks for oil, gas and other fuel producers. The idea never got traction before, and it’s even more DOA now that Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu — in a tough reelection race this November — has risen to chair the Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Obama is trying again for a major federal investment aimed at expanding high-quality preschool. But the pay-for — a doubling of the tobacco tax — remains a nonstarter.
Fears of expanding government don’t seem to stop the president from pitching a new infrastructure bank, which would leverage public- and private-sector funds to help seed large projects. There have been bipartisan bills introduced on this issue in the Senate. But that’s never been enough to address complaints that it should be Congress dishing out the dough.
5. Mom and apple pie
Lawmakers won’t immediately reject everything in Obama’s budget.
After all, Senate Democrats will have a big say later this year when it comes to crafting the details of appropriations bills. And some of the president’s ideas hit on issues that nearly everyone agrees on.
Just take a look at several of the domestic items packaged in the president’s call for $ 56 billion in new spending.
Obama wants to spend $ 6 billion over four years to help community colleges and other job-training institutions launch new programs and apprenticeships.
And he’s calling for a Works Progress Administration-like attempt to spiff up the national parks ahead of the agency’s centennial in 2016. That should resonate with lawmakers following the shutdown, which the Associated Press reported Tuesday had meant 8 million fewer visitors and $ 144 million in lost spending at the parks and surrounding communities.
Former House Appropriations Committee GOP staff director Jim Dyer called the parks pitch a “shrewd” move by OMB that would likely find a way into this year’s spending bill. “The Park Service still enjoys a broad constituency on the Hill, and, despite a scarcity of resources, there will be interest in recognizing their anniversary,” he said.
Here’s one of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
This portrait is of former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is seen here.
And German Chancellor Angela Merkel:
Another wall displays four different world leaders, including (clockwise from top-left) Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, former French President (2007-2012) Nicolas Sarkozy and former South Korean President (2008-2013) Lee Myung-bak.
Here’s former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
And Liberia’s President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.
And finally, it’s a portrait of former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe Velez.
