Obama: Energy research is vital

WASHINGTON - President Obama said yesterday the nation must move quickly to develop clean and innovative sources of energy after years of delay.

"We've seen enough," Obama said at a White House event intended to draw attention to his energy proposals. "We can remain the world's leading importer of foreign oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of renewable energy."

The president's comments came after a weekend in which administration officials indicated that his campaign promise to explore new sources of renewable energy was one element of his budget that was nonnegotiable.

Obama is devoting much of his time these days to building support for his $3.6 trillion budget proposal even as members of Congress from both parties push back with concerns about its size and fears of large future deficits.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D., N.D.) is preparing to sharply cut Obama's 11 percent increase for nondefense appropriations to perhaps 6 percent. In the House, moderate and conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats are pressing for deeper cuts.

Obama is also taking a drubbing from Republicans over proposed tax increases as well as for a plan to address climate change that would impose higher energy costs on consumers and businesses.

Obama and his aides have responded with an aggressive effort to boost his spending plan, especially for his core projects - affordable health coverage; improving education; and diversifying the nation's energy supply with a focus on so-called green jobs.

Speaking to entrepreneurs in the fields of energy, Obama said their country needed them to create jobs and be inventive. "Your country will support you," he said. "Your president will support you."

The administration's $787 billion stimulus package, separately from its budget proposal, includes $39 billion for the Department of Energy and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy.

Obama's budget calls for making a tax credit for research and experimentation permanent. Overall, it would invest billions in research designed to reduce climate change and would guarantee loans for companies that develop clean energy technologies.

Despite the pressure to scale back his priorities, the president said energy innovation cannot wait. Progress can take years, he said.

"Sometimes you have to fail before you can succeed," he said. "And often it takes not just the commitment of an innovator but the commitment of a country to innovation."

Obama's budget proposal also includes changes in the health-care system to provide medical care to almost 50 million uninsured people; a "cap-and-trade" system for selling permits to emit greenhouse gases; and a tamping down of Pentagon budget increases. All three proposals have drawn controversy.

It also would impose $647 billion in tax increases over the next decade on individuals making more than $200,000 a year and couples making more than $250,000.

At the same time it would cut taxes for most workers by $400 and couples by $600 a year at a cost of $60 billion over the next decade.

Despite uneasiness among Democrats about the worsening deficit picture - a Congressional Budget Office analysis Friday estimates Obama's budget would generate deficits totaling $9.3 trillion over the next decade - party leaders are hewing closely to his budget agenda.

"We're trying to track as much as we can the president's budget," House Budget Committee Chairman John Spratt Jr. (D., S.C.) said. "We want to cut the deficit by more than half in five years. . . . I think that we can attain that."

Unlike Obama's budget, which projects spending and revenues over the course of the next decade, the companion House and Senate budgets span five years.

Spratt and Conrad say longer-term fiscal projections are inherently shaky.

But a five-year budget window also means that Democrats won't have to reveal the deficits their budget plans are projected to generate from 2015 through 2019.

Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), at one time Obama's choice to head the Commerce Department, called the Democrats' budget blueprint "an attempt to avoid serious choices."