World Crisis Online

President Barack Obama challenged Congress to work with him to negotiate a deal to tackle the bulging US budget deficit after widespread criticism that his own plan shied away from addressing long-term fiscal problems.

The US president’s budget proposal, released on Monday, aimed to balance spending and taxes by 2015 but dealt only in passing with the big spending items of health and social security that will add substantially to debt in the future unless they are pared back.

Saying that “everyone will needed to give a little”, Mr Obama said he was willing to sit down with Republicans and Democrats in Congress in coming months to begin negotiating on a new budget framework. “All of these steps are going to be difficult,” he said.

His remarks came as White House officials confronted a flood of criticism about the budget on Capitol Hill, where Republicans now control the House of Representatives.

The attacks focused on what conservative lawmakers viewed as the timid nature of the cuts, the lack of urgency on reform of large “entitlement” programmes such as Medicare and social security and the damaging nature of tax increases embedded in the budget proposal.

“The president’s budget disregards the drivers of our debt crisis and the insolvency of our entitlement programmes,” said Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee, leading Republican efforts to write alternative plans.

“Every day that passes without leadership on this crucial challenge is another day of uncertainty for job creators and darkening economic prospects for millions of Americans living in the shadow of our growing debt,” he said at a hearing with Jack Lew, White House budget director.

In a sign of the bitter battles ahead, the White House’s Office of Management and Budget said Mr Obama would veto a proposed bill from Republicans in the House containing $100bn in cuts this fiscal year because it could damage “vital military requirements”.

Mr Obama called for patience and played down the threat of financial crisis triggered by swelling government debt, saying that markets would be happy as long as they saw that the government was “chipping away” at the problem in co-operation with Congress.

He said the drain on the budget of future health spending as the number of retirees rose was the “biggest problem”, while sounding more optimistic on social security. “I am confident we can get social security done by making modest adjustments, without slashing benefits,” he said.

Tom Price, a Republican representative from Georgia, told Mr Lew the “house was burning down” while the White House played “kickball”. “The administration is not attending to the business that needs to be done,” he said.

Republicans are proposing much deeper spending cuts – starting in the current fiscal year – compared with Mr Obama’s plan, though they also have not been specific about tackling large entitlement programmes.