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By offering to raise taxes and cut entitlement spending at the same time, the new formal budget proposal from the Obama administration should sufficiently upset just about everyone who will have to vote on it. While the full details of the 2014 budget plan will be released later today, most of the major themes and policy changes are starting emerge, including a return to some familiar, but previously neglected ideas, like itemized deduction caps, the end of the carried interest loophole, and the formal introduction of the "Buffett Rule."
Those are the types of revenue proposals that have typically been shot down by Republicans in Congress, but the President has offered his opponents some carrots in a continued pursuit of the mythical "grand bargain." The biggest and most controversial of those is a change to Social Security that would alter the method for calculating inflation adjustments, while also cutting spending for Medicare, the military, and other big programs.
Among the new spending proposals being added are a universal preschool proposal (to be paid for by an increase in federal tobacco taxes,) and $50 billion in new infrastructure spending. The budget also factors in savings from the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.