President Obama will unveil his budget for the next fiscal year on Monday. To find out more about the budget proposal, Steve Inskeep talks to David Wessel, economics editor at The Wall Street Journal.

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Two big questions, though. One, will Congress and the president find a way to avoid this end of the year catastrophe, where taxes will go up and across-the-board spending cuts will take place, which would hurt the economy? The Congressional Budget Office says that'll add one percentage point to the unemployment rate in 2013. And under current law, that's what will happen right now. Exactly. Under current law, taxes are going to go up at the end of the year, and there's going to be an across-the-board spending cut. The markets are wondering: Will Congress find a way to avoid this, which everybody says they want to do. And secondly, at some point, the markets want to know: Does the U.S. have a consensus to do something about its deficits and debt? We know that's unlikely to happen before the election, but the tone of the debate, the willingness to compromise, what people actually say, what they do will affect what markets think about that. What's the deficit likely to look like this year? Last year's deficit was $1.3 trillion. The White House is likely to project, the CBO already has, that the deficit this year will come in closer to $1 trillion. Why? Because the economy's doing a little better, so tax receipts are doing better as a result, and some of the stimulus spending is beginning to wear off. Of course, the ultimate deficit number for this fiscal year depends on a lot of things, how well the economy does, and whether Congress does indeed extend that payroll tax holiday, extend unemployment compensation after February.