Obama's out for 'sweeping change'

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama described his expansive budget proposal on Saturday as "a threat to the status quo in Washington" and cast himself as a populist crusader willing to do battle with special interests to expand health care, curb pollution and improve education.

"I didn't come here to do the same thing we've been doing or to take small steps forward," Obama said in his weekly radio and Internet address. "I came to provide the sweeping change that this country demanded when it went to the polls in November. That is the change this budget starts to make, and that is the change I'll be fighting for in the weeks ahead."

The address hinted at the strategy the White House intends to employ to push for the spending plan released last week, a return to a more traditional Democratic approach of positioning the party as fighting against the rich and powerful. In Obama's telling, he is taking on entrenched interests in the form of banks, insurance companies, large agribusinesses, oil and gas companies and others.

Beyond the $3.6 trillion budget for the 2010 fiscal year, the president's spending plan outlines a wide array of ambitious initiatives for the next several years that collectively would transform American society. Obama wants to extend health coverage to the more than 40 million uninsured, revamp industry so that it stops producing so many emissions that cause climate change, develop alternative energy sources, and invest billions more in education.

At the same time, he wants to restructure the tax code to shift more of the burden from lower and middle income workers to the wealthy, effectively a redistribution of wealth intended to reverse the widening income gap of recent years. And he promised to bring the skyrocketing federal deficit, projected to reach a breathtaking $1.75 trillion this year, under control by 2013.

The president said his plan already has "special interests" gearing up for battle. He said "the insurance industry won't like the idea" that he would force competitive bidding for Medicare coverage and that "banks and big student lenders won't like the idea" of ending subsidies for student loans and that "oil and gas companies won't like" the end of certain tax breaks.

"The system we have now might work for the powerful and well-connected interests that have run Washington for far too long, but I don't," he said. "I work for the American people."