According to the administration officials, the US President Obama is all set to call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programmes to save USD 250 billion by 2020. This clearly highlights his seriousness to narrow down the budget deficit.

The officials have revealed that the proposal would be a major component both of Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and also of the budget he is slated to send to Congress on Monday for the new financial year beginning in October.

The three year freeze is expected to cover the agencies and programmes for which Congress allocates specific budgets every year. This shall include air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks among others.

However, this proposal would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, apart from the entitlement programmes that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.