President Obama this week will focus on ways to reduce the government's projected $1 trillion-plus annual deficits over the next several years, beginning on Monday when he hosts a "fiscal responsibility summit" at the White House.

During his weekly radio address yesterday, Obama reiterated his goal of reining in the government's "exploding deficits" as part of his long term economic strategy, insisting that "we can't generate sustained growth without getting our deficits under control." He went on to acknowledge that "[n]one of this will be easy."

The president's focus on fiscal matters will continue throughout the week, with a visit to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to address the nation during a joint session of Congress, followed by the Thursday release of a fiscal year 2010 budget outline that promises sober assessments, accounting honesty, and a return to fiscal discipline. (The administration is expected to release a complete budget in the spring.) 

Based on his campaign statements, look for Obama to propose allowing the Bush tax cuts for higher-income individuals to expire at the end of 2010, resulting in boosted federal revenues, and drawing down troops in Iraq as the centerpiece of reducing government spending. The administration is also expected to exclude from its budget projections the usual gimmicks such as failing to account for the costs of war and natural disasters and patching the alternative minimum tax. In past years, these items have added hundreds of billions of dollars to the yearly deficit.

The House and Senate will return on Monday from their weeklong recess. House leaders are expected to bring to the floor a $410 billion "omnibus" appropriations bill containing the yet-to-be enacted fiscal year (FY) 2009 appropriations bills. Most federal departments are operating at FY 2008 funding levels under a continuing resolution that expires at midnight on March 6th.

The Senate is slated to take up a motion to proceed to the D.C. voting rights bill (S.160) next week. The legislation would recognize the District of Columbia as a congressional district for the purposes of representation in the House, and would provide Utah with an additional seat in the House, raising the membership in the chamber from 435 to 437 members. On Tuesday, the Senate is scheduled to vote on whether to proceed to the nomination of Hilda Solis to be Secretary of Labor.

Legislation permanently authorizing the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act of 1999 may also be in the pipeline for Senate floor consideration. The bill (S. 303) would require the federal government to permanently maintain the website Grants.gov, which currently provides information on more than $500 billion in grants from 1,000 programs administered by 26 agencies. S. 303 would also require the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) along with various other federal agencies to improve the administrative procedures for providing grants.

Specifically, the legislation would mandate that OMB either expand on Grants.gov or create an entirely new website that allows grant applicants to search and apply for grants and provide statistics on grant usage.

"In 1999 I said the Federal Financial Assistance Management Improvement Act was an important step toward detangling the web of duplicative federal grants available to states, localities and community organizations," Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who drafted the original 1999 legislation, said upon introducing S. 303. "Last year I said that while some progress was made under that law to detangle the web, work remained to be done. I hope that Congress will quickly reauthorize this law so that OMB and federal agencies continue their efforts to simplify and streamline the federal grant process."