Top White House Economist Tight-Lipped On Budget Details

The Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers said Tuesday that the White House’s 2012 budget will include a mix of spending cuts and initiatives aimed at growing the economy.

During an appearance at the Aspen Institute in Washington, D.C., Austan Goolsbee shared minimal details of the president’s plan, set for release on February 14.

“The president is going to put out a budget…and in that budget he is going to say, ‘Here is what we cut, and here is where we cannot afford to cut,” Goolsbee said.

Goolsbee downplayed the significance of a proposal by House Republicans to shed $32 billion from the rest of this year’s federal budget, arguing that discretionary spending cuts won’t have that much of an impact on reducing the nation’s roughly $14 trillion debt. He instead pointed to entitlement spending and health care costs as two key areas that Congress must address in the long run.