The Hill News

President Obama will lay out four steps he thinks the U.S. government should take if it wants to balance its budget during a major speech Wednesday on fiscal policy.

Obama will talk up the need to keep domestic spending low, cut defense spending, reforming Medicare and Medicaid and reform the tax code in a speech this afternoon at the George Washington University, according to a White House official.

The White House provided no specifics of what would comprise Obama's four pillars, but an official said his proposals would "borrow" from the recommendations of the 2010 fiscal commission that Obama empaneled, but whose proposals the president never fully embraced.

The President will make clear that while we all share the goal of reducing our deficit and putting our nation back on a fiscally responsible path, his vision is one where we can live within our means without putting burdens on the middle class and seniors or impeding our ability t! o invest in our future. 

The administration has closely guarded the specifics of its plan, refusing to provide much advance details to the media. Obama will meet this morning with congressional leaders in both parties, though, to outline some of those details.

But Republicans are entering that meeting with a large degree of skepticism, warning flatly that they wouldn't accept any proposals that raises taxes.

"This is vintage Obama. Two months ago he was in a posture where he was basically ignoring this huge fiscal challenge we've got before us and this debt burden that we're under and calling for more investment," House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said this morning on CNBC. "And now he's coming in at the last minute."

Cantor said that Republicans at the White House today would also most like to hear specifics on entitlement reform. The House GOP is set to vote this week on Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) 2012 budget, which w! ould make significant changes to Medicare and Medicaid, two pr! ograms O bama's set to address in his speech.

Liberals in the Congress, meanwhile, have sternly warned Obama against big changes to those programs.