Obama urges control of mushrooming deficits

After launching an unprecedented spending program aimed at forestalling a meltdown of the US economy, US President Barack Obama vowed Saturday to put an equal effort into tackling trillion dollar deficits facing the nation.
In his weekly radio address, Obama said that he and his administration were determined to do "all we can to get exploding deficits under control as our economy begins to recover."
According to the Congressional Budget Office, the provisional US budget deficit in fiscal 2009 will balloon to a record 1.2 trillion dollars.
The deficit for fiscal 2008 which ended in September reached 438 billion dollars, or 3.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the office said in a report last month.
However, the figures do not include the cost of a huge 787-billion-dollar economic stimulus plan signed by Obama into law last Tuesday.
Roughly one-third of the stimulus funds will be spent on tax cuts, totaling 286 billion dollars, in an effort to boost consumer spending, a key engine of the world's largest economy.
But a further 120 billion dollars is being allocated to "shovel-ready" infrastructure projects, in such sectors as transportation, road-building, improving the power grid and renewable energy installations.
Leading Republicans and other critics said the mammoth spending plan was mortgaging the nation's future, for which America's "children and grandchildren will pay a hefty price."
But Obama said he was now determined to put spending under control, saying that work on the deficit will begin on Monday.