WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama will ask Congress for as much as $68 billion more than current budget limits in fiscal 2016, two people familiar with the administration's proposal said.
The request would set up a fight with the Republican-led House and Senate over whether to reverse part of the spending limits that the U.S. Congress and the White House agreed to in fiscal deals in recent years.
The new spending would mean as much as $34 billion each for the national security and domestic sides of what will be a budget of almost $4 trillion. It will be detailed in the budget proposal Obama will send to Congress on Feb. 2.
That amounts to an almost 7 percent increase over discretionary-spending levels prescribed by automatic cuts -- known as sequestration -- voted into law in 2011, said the people, who asked for anonymity because the budget plan hasn't been released.
It's seen by analysts as a bold move at a time when many Republicans in Congress say they are eager to make deeper cuts in spending and are invigorated by a November election in which they expanded their House majority and gained control of the Senate.
"I think there might some bipartisan opposition" to the new spending, said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Senate and House Republicans were meeting at a policy retreat Thursday in Hershey, Pa.
It's not yet clear whether Obama will seek to offset the spending increases with revenue or cuts elsewhere in the budget. The additional funding would put the bottom line for discretionary spending at about $1.08 trillion for fiscal 2016.
Obama is asking for the extra spending at the same time he has been highlighting an improving government balance sheet.
The budget deficit has been shrinking in recent years as the economy strengthens, hiring picks up and company profits improve. The shortfall in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 was $483 billion, or 2.8 percent of gross domestic product, down from a record $1.42 trillion in 2009.
Third-ranking House Republican Steve Scalise of Louisiana said Thursday in Hershey: "We need to work on getting our budget back to balance and start living within our means."
A 7 percent increase in spending, he said, "doesn't do that."
House Speaker John Boehner's spokesman, Cory Fritz, said in an emailed statement that "President Obama just can't wait to try and spend more money Americans don't have."
Discretionary funds are the portion of the budget that the president and Congress agree to each year, as opposed to mandatory spending that generally funds long-term programs, such as Medicare and Social Security. Money for those programs is distributed on the basis of the eligibility of participants rather than limited to an annually negotiated sum.
The 2016 fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
Melanie Roussell Newman, a spokesman for the Office of Management and Budget, declined to comment on the reported budget plan.
The White House also will ask Congress to cut a separate overseas contingency operations account that has funded U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan, the people familiar with the administration's proposal said. The 20 percent reduction sought in that account, to $51 billion from $64 billion, comes in conjunction with the drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.
That could put additional pressure on the Pentagon -- and its allies in Congress -- to keep pushing for an easing of sequestration, analysts said. Democrats have long maintained that defense-minded Republicans will ultimately join them in increasing funding for national security and domestic programs.
"You've got a battle in the Republican ranks," Maryland Rep. Chris Van Hollen, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said.
He noted that Republican senators, including John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, favor increased defense spending, while more libertarian lawmakers in the House and Senate are loath to lift current spending limits.
Democrats want the lure of more Pentagon money to help boost spending for education, scientific research and other domestic programs.
"We believe we should work together to lift the caps on both," Van Hollen said.
The Republicans and Obama already have butted heads this legislative session, with the president promising vetoes on GOP-led measures to approve construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline and to roll back parts of Obama's health care law and some restrictions on the financial industry.
At their first joint winter retreat in a decade, GOP lawmakers discussed their first foreign-policy challenge to Obama: a likely Senate vote on legislation restricting the administration's ability to strike a deal with Iran over its nuclear program.
The United States and its allies hope for an agreement by summer that would ease international sanctions currently in place in exchange for stricter limits on Iran's nuclear activity.
Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., the new chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said he and other lawmakers are drafting a measure to give Congress a right to "vote up or down" on any agreement.
Corker said current law gives Congress a say in any proposed international sale of nuclear equipment, and some lawmakers in both parties believe that should be extended to any deal with Iran. He said senators will soon be introducing legislation to that effect.
Other lawmakers in both parties are drafting a measure relating to tougher penalties against Iran if it does not give up uranium enrichment as part of any accord. Separately, the Senate Banking Committee has announced a hearing for next week on the "strategic necessity" of sanctions.
U.N. Ambassador Samantha Power said earlier this week that imposing new sanctions now "will almost certainly end a negotiations process that has not only frozen the advance of Iran's nuclear program, but that could lead us to an understanding that would give us confidence in its exclusively peaceful nature."
The Obama administration also has taken a dim view of additional sanctions.
But Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, the second-ranking member of the GOP leadership, said the sanctions legislation was one area where Republicans have "large bipartisan majorities approaching veto override."
A two-thirds majority of both houses is required to override a veto.
Information for this article was contributed by Jonathan Allen, Tony Capaccio and Billy House of Bloomberg News and by David Espo and Erica Werner of The Associated Press.
A Section on 01/16/2015