Obama’s budget: faster, but not further, than Osborne’s

Barack Obama’s budget plan has become a political debating point on this side of the Atlantic. Ed Balls set the ball a-rolling in an article for the Guardian this morning, which effectively claimed that the President isn’t planning to cut the deficit as quickly as George Osborne is. “The truth is that it is Osborne himself who is isolated,” is how he pugnaciously put it. But the Tories’ Matthew Hancock has since responded — on Coffee House, as it happens — arguing that, actually, the Obama Plan is simpatico with what Osborne is doing.

By way of hovering above the red-on-blue scrap, we thought we’d put together a comparison of Osborne’s and Obama’s budgets for the benefit of CoffeeHousers. Before we start, though, a basic point: Obama’s budget is not the official American one. It is subject to change, political wrangling and Congressional counter-demands before being signed into law. Which is to say, what follows is a guide to Obama’s original intentions, not what will actually happen:

1) Deficit reduction.