President Obama sent Congress a $3.8 trillion budget Monday for fiscal year 2011, pushing a plan that includes new jobs-creation programs but is projected to add nearly $1.3 trillion in deficit spending on top of the current year’s projected $1.6 trillion deficit.

According to the plan, the 2011 deficit of $1.267 trillion would fund nearly the entirety of the year’s discretionary spending, which is $1.415 trillion or 37 percent of the government’s total outlays. Mandatory spending on items such as entitlements and interest payments make up the rest.

The Senate moved last week to extend the nation’s debt limit to $14.3 trillion to accommodate the projected gap for the current spending year, which ends Sept. 30, but with another $1.3 trillion hole next year, the nation’s debt could reach $15.6 trillion by Oct. 1, 2011. That would surpass the nation’s annual gross domestic product.

A $1.6 trillion deficit would represent 10.6 percent of current GDP, while 2011’s budget deficit would be 8. 3 percent of GDP. The White House says over the next 10 years, the average deficit will represent only 4.5 percent of GDP annually. Last year’s deficit was $1.42 trillion.

Obama on Monday blamed much of the nation’s budget woes on tax cuts passed under the prior administration, as well as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and other programs. He called for reining in the budget over time, but said the need to help Americans hurting from the economic downturn makes that difficult to do right away.

“We have to do what families across America are doing — save where we can, so that we can afford what we need,” Obama said. “We won’t be able to bring down this deficit overnight.”

According to White House estimates, the budget’s deficit for fiscal year 2013 would drop to $700 billion before jumping back up to $1 trillion in 2020, the furthest out that budgeters will predict.

In the proposed budget, the White House is touting $20 billion in cuts and savings.

But those savings are offset by increases elsewhere. For instance, the administration is budgeting a $20 billion increase in certain education funding — a $17 billion increase for Pell Grant funding and a $3 billion increase for programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

The numbers come as the president and congressional Democrats have pivoted from preparing a $1 trillion health care proposal to focusing on jobs and the deficit. Speaking at the State of the Union last week, Obama told a joint session of Congress that he wants to freeze spending — beginning in 2011 — on discretionary spending except the military, veterans and homeland security. The president said that would save $250 billion over 10 years.It also calls for $250 payments to 57 million Social Security recipients to bolster their finances in a year when they are not receiving inflation-pegged, cost-of-living increases because the consumer price index is so low.

In the president’s budget, Obama is going to set aside $160 billion for the war in Afghanistan and ongoing operations in Iraq.

(Source: Fox News)