WASHINGTON — In more than a year of campaigning, Barack Obama has made a long list of promises for new federal programs costing tens of billions of dollars, many of them aimed at protecting people from the pain of a souring economy.
But if he wins the presidency, Obama will be hard-pressed to keep his blueprint intact. A variety of budget analysts are skeptical that the Democrat’s agenda could survive in the face of large federal budget deficits and the difficulty of making good on his plan to raise new revenue by closing tax loopholes, ending the Iraq war and cutting spending that is deemed low-priority.
Like predecessors who also had to square far-reaching promises with inescapable budget realities, they say, a President Obama might need to jettison pieces of Obama-ism.
“I don’t think it all adds up,” Isabel Sawhill, an official in President Clinton’s Office of Management and Budget, said of Obama’s spending plans.
“There will definitely need to be a recalibration of these proposals once someone is in office,” said Sawhill, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “The fiscal situation just isn’t going to permit doing what Sen. Obama or anyone else would like.”
