 "Obama promotes budget plan during Facebook visit")
Next stop on U.S. President Barack Obama’s tour to tout his plan to slash the country’s spiraling deficit: Facebook.
[caption id=“attachment_931” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“US President Barack Obama will use Facebook to discuss his vision on the budget. Alex Wong/Getty Images”]
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President Obama will broadcast live from the social media giant’s Palo Alto headquarters on Wednesday afternoon to discuss his vision for balancing the federal budget, which includes taxing the wealthy and making cuts to both outdated military technology and subsidies to healthcare insurance companies. The town hall will be live-streamed, and the president will speak and respond to pre-selected questions using Facebook Live, an online video channel that was serendipitously developed last year to enable stranded software programmers to participate virtually in Facebook’s annual gathering for developers.
The U.S. deficit has become an issue of increasing urgency, following a Tuesday announcement from Standard & Poor’s that it wasrevising its outlook on the country’slong-term sovereign credit rating of AAA/A-1from stable to negativedue to the country’s “very large budget deficits and rising government indebtedness." This adds pressure to the pitched political battle between Democrats and Republicans over the best way to address the country’s $1.4 trillion budget deficit and $14.3 trillion debt burden.
The Republican proposal would make $6 billion over the next decade in cuts to services and programs-doing away with the current configurations of Medicare and Medicaid altogether-while cutting corporate and personal tax rates.
During his Facebook appearance, President Obama will attempt to make a case for the Democrat proposal. At a similar town hall at Virginia University the day before, the president said he aims to cut spending “in a way that is fair and asked for shared responsibility ” while investing in education, innovation, infrastructure, and strengthening some social service safety nets.
The White House invited the public to watch Wednesday’s “ town hall on the economy ” via his Facebook page (more than 16,000 of Obama’s Facebook fans “like” the announcement).
But President Obama has more than the national budget on his mind during his trip to Silicon Valley. He’s also scheduled to attend three campaign fundraisers-including a $35,800-per-plate dinner at the San Francisco home of Salesforce.com CEO Mark Benioff-before Air Force One leaves SFO for Los Angeles on Thursday.