President Obama will reveal his new budget on Monday as America struggles under a record debt mountain of $14.1 trillion.

That represents $45,000 of debt for every man, woman and child in the US.

Rather than usher in his own 'age of austerity' measures like those in the UK and Greece, the White House is proposing to freeze non-military discretionary spending for five years, while government workers will see their salaries pegged.

The president believes this will reduce the deficit by $400bn over the next decade.

But based on current spending figures, the gap between the amount the government raises in taxes and the amount it spends is $1.5 trillion while the country's accumulated amount of debt is almost 10 times that figure.

Written down, the figure would challenge the screen of most pocket calculators: $14,144,355,000,000 (at time of writing).

The current administration worries that if it brings in much tougher cuts, it may damage the fragile recovery and hurt the poorest Americans.

While the US is slowly pulling out of recession, growth is patchy and unemployment remains stubbornly high.

The budget is just a proposal - it has to be approved by Congress, where there is a new political reality after last November's midterm elections.

The Republicans, who advocate low taxes and small government, now control the House of Representatives.

They are still wrangling over this year's spending, so the president's budget plans for 2012 could get a rough ride.

In effect there is a political stalemate - on the Right they believe large benefit programmes like Medicare and social security should be cut back. That is anathema to the Left, who would like to see the Pentagon's half a trillion dollar annual budget under serious review.

The Republican victories last November led to the renewal of all the controversial tax cuts brought in by President Bush, which many economists believe America just cannot afford.

"Unfortunately, it may take America coming closer to the kind of crisis point that European countries have seen before the leadership in America has the courage to say: 'OK, we have to do something right now,'" Diane Lim Rogers, the chief economist of the non-partisan Concord Coalition, told Sky News.

Observers believe the political atmosphere is so highly charged it may take until after the next presidential election before serious compromises are made.

Source - Yahoo.