The budget will hit congressional offices less than 24 hours after the government's top watchdog agency declared that nearly $100 billion was wasted last year in duplicative and overlapping programs stretching into every corner of the Washington bureaucracy.
FactCheck.org, a program of the University of Pennsylvania's Annenberg Policy Center, reported in February that Obama's total sum included about $600 billion in new taxes - not spending reductions. It also included $500 billion in reductions of the amount the federal government planned to pay in future interest on its debts.
The budget, it says, 'would achieve $1.8 trillion in additional deficit reduction over the next 10 years, bringing total deficit reduction to $4.3 trillion. This represents more than enough deficit reduction to replace the cuts required by the Joint Committee [on] sequestration.'
Only about $1.4 trillion consisted of actual spending cuts - or at least what Washington wonks call spending cuts.
Federal budgets are configured along what's called a 'baseline,' providing a predetermined level of year-on-year increases that Congress has set on auto-pilot, and with which the White House generally considers it unwise to interfere.
The $1.4 trillion in cuts were merely reductions in those planned rates of spending increases.
The $1.8 trillion in new savings promised by the Obama White House in Tuesday's embargoed outline include '$400 billion in health savings that build on the health reform law.'
But Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius conceded on March 26 that many Americans' health care premiums will increase under the new law, an indication that participation rates may not be at the level the administration wants to see.
Another $580 billion of the newly promised $1.8 trillion in savings comes from tax increases.
The larger problem for the White House is that Obama's promise of $580 billion in new tax revenues over ten years isn't nearly large enough to cover the spending bloat that Washington insiders continue to acknowledge as a crippling force.
The public debt now stands at roughly $17 trillion, up $6 trillion from the debt when Obama took office in 2009. Even if the federal government takes ten years to rack up its next $6 trillion in accumulated deficits, the new taxes would contain less than 10 percent of the damage.
The budget's most controversial feature may be the adoption of what economists call the 'Chained Consumer Price Index' measure of inflation, and what the administration referred to as 'using a chained measure of inflation for cost-of-living adjustments.'
The chained CPI signals a shift in how the federal government will calculate everything from Social Security payouts and congressional pensions to college students' Pell Grants and veterans' benefits. Anything tied to cost-of-living increases would be subject to a new formula.
The White House's budget blueprint suggests that these programs would see $230 billion in costs savings over 10 years. The Congressional Budget Office puts the number at $216 billion.
The CBO also notes, however - and the White House omits - that a switch to the chained CPI will also raise more than $124 billion in new tax revenues.
The money will come pouring in because the consumer price index also controls income tax brackets, tax filers' standard deductions, nontaxable contribution limits for 401(k) retirement plans, and more.
So millions of individual Americans will see themselves moved involuntarily to higher tax brackets, and middle-class taxpayers in particular will lose some of the tax credits and deductions that they count on.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney conceded as much during an April 5 briefing, when CBS News Chief White House Correspondent Major Garrett asked if it would 'raise taxes on middle-income Americans.'
'I'm not disputing that,' Carney said, adding that 'it is not the president's ideal policy.'
It will, however, be part of his budget
