THE PRESIDENT:  Good morning, everybody.  Please have a seat.  I figured that I’d give Jay one more taste of freedom -- (laughter) -- before we lock him in a room with all of you, so I’m here to do a little downfield blocking for him.  Before I take a few questions, let me say a few words about the budget we put out yesterday.

Just like every family in America, the federal government has to do two things at once.  It has to live within its means while still investing in the future.  If you’re a family trying to cut back, you might skip going out to dinner, you might put off a vacation.  But you wouldn’t want to sacrifice saving for your kids’ college education or making key repairs in your house. So you cut back on what you can’t afford to focus on what you can’t do without.    

And that’s what we’ve done with this year’s budget.  When I took office, I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term.  Our budget meets that pledge and puts us on a path to pay for what we spend by the middle of the decade.

As a start, it freezes domestic discretionary spending（可自由支配的个人开支） over the next five years, which would cut the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade, and bring annual domestic spending to its lowest share of the economy since Dwight Eisenhower.

Now, some of the savings will come through less waste and more efficiency.  To take just one example, we’ll give -- we'll save billions of dollars by getting rid of 14,000 office buildings, lots, and government-owned properties that we no longer need.  And to make sure special interests are not larding up legislation with special projects, I’ve pledged to veto（否决，禁止） any bills that contain earmarks（专项拨款） .

Still, even as we cut waste and inefficiency, this budget freeze will also require us to make some tough choices.  It will mean freezing the salaries of hardworking federal employees for the next two years.  It will mean cutting things I care about deeply, like community action programs for low-income communities.  And we have some conservation programs that are going to be scaled back.  These are all programs that I wouldn’t be cutting if we were in a better fiscal（财政的） situation.  But we're not.

We also know that cutting annual domestic spending alone won’t be enough to meet our long-term fiscal challenges.  That’s what the bipartisan（两党连立的） fiscal commission concluded; that’s what I've concluded.  And that's why I’m eager to tackle excessive spending wherever we find it -– in domestic spending, but also in defense spending, health care spending, and spending that is embedded in the tax code.

Some of this spending we’ve begun to tackle in this budget  -– like the $78 billion that Secretary Gates identified in defense cuts.  But to get where we need to go we’re going to have to do more.  We’ll have to bring down health care costs further, including in programs like Medicare and Medicaid, which are the single biggest contributor to our long-term deficits.  I believe we should strengthen Social Security for future generations, and I think we can do that without slashing（猛烈的） benefits or putting current retirees at risk.  And I’m willing to work with everybody on Capitol Hill to simplify the individual tax code for all Americans.

All of these steps are going to be difficult.  And that’s why all of them will require Democrats, independents, and Republicans to work together.  I recognize that there are going to be plenty of arguments in the months to come, and everybody is going to have to give a little bit.  But when it comes to difficult choices about our budget and our priorities, we have found common ground before.  Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill came together to save Social Security.  Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress eventually found a way to settle their differences and balance the budget.  And many Democrats and Republicans in Congress today came together in December to pass a tax cut that has made Americans’ paychecks a little bigger this year and will spur on（驱使，鼓励） additional economic growth this year. 

So I believe we can find this common ground, but we're going to have to work.  And we owe the American people a government that lives within its means while still investing in our future  -- in areas like education, innovation, and infrastructure that will help us attract new jobs and businesses to our shores.  That’s the principle that should drive this debate in the coming months.  I believe that’s how America will win the future in the coming years.

So with that, let me take a few questions.  And I'm going to start off with Ben Feller of AP.  

Q    Thank you very much, Mr. President.  You’ve been talking a lot about the need for tough choices in your budget, but your plan does not address the long-term crushing costs of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- the real drivers of long-term debt.  Can you explain that?  Where is your leadership on that issue and when are we going to see your plan?

And if I may, sir, on the foreign front, the uprising in Egypt has helped prompt protests in Bahrain, in Yemen, and Iran. I'm wondering how you balance your push for freedoms in those places against the instability that could really endanger U.S. interests.

THE PRESIDENT:  On the budget, what my budget does is to put forward some tough choices, some significant spending cuts, so that by the middle of this decade our annual spending will match our annual revenues.  We will not be adding more to the national debt.  So, to use a -- sort of an analogy that families are familiar with, we're not going to be running up the credit card any more.  That's important -- and that's hard to do.  But it’s necessary to do.  And I think that the American people understand that.

At the same time, we're going to be making some key investments in places like education, and science and technology, research and development that the American people understand is required to win the future.  So what we've done is we've taken a scalpel（外科手术刀） to the discretionary budget（弹性预算） rather than a machete.

Now, I said in the State of the Union and I'll repeat, that side of the ledger only accounts for about 12 percent of our budget.  So we've got a whole bunch of other stuff that we're going to have to do, including dealing with entitlements.

Now, you talked about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.  The truth is Social Security is not the huge contributor to the deficit that the other two entitlements（权利） are.

I'm confident we can get Social Security done in the same way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill were able to get it done, by parties coming together, making some modest adjustments.  I think we can avoid slashing benefits, and I think we can make it stable and stronger for not only this generation but for the next generation.