Fiscal Year 2013 Budget Guidance

MEMORANDUM FOR THE HEADS OF DEPARTMENTS AND AGENCIES
The President has defined our fiscal challenge as demonstrating that we can live within our means so that we can invest in job creation and economic growth now and in the long term. In April, he proposed a balanced framework for $4 trillion in deficit reduction that would put us on path to achieve fiscal sustainability by the middle of this decade. Over the summer, in negotiations with the Congress, the President pursued deficit reduction of this magnitude. Once it was clear a bipartisan agreement could not yet be reached, the President signed into law a down payment toward this goal: the Budget Control Act of 20 11. This legislation set ceilings on total discretionary spending and a target of $2.4 trillion in total deficit reduction over the next decade.