With the deficit above $1 trillion and the recession ongoing, President Barack Obama today unveiled an ambitious and revolutionary budget.

Asking Congress for $3.75 trillion, the president proposed increasing taxes for the wealthiest Americans, raising revenue through carbon credit incentives for businesses and curtailing government pay-offs to crop farmers whose income exceeds $500,000.

Those and other measures, he says, will help reduce the ever-growing deficit by at least half over four years, and lay the foundation for new health care programs and other administrative plans.

Mr. Obama also took some shots today at the previous administration’s "dishonest accounting" practices that have underprojected the deficit and obscured budgetary directions. This budget, said the president, will be "an honest accounting of where we are and where we intend to go."

Republicans aren’t so sure about that, and Republican Rep. Mike Pence blasted the budget as insufficient: "The American people deserve a budget that puts fiscal discipline and jobs first. The budget offered by the Obama administration fails on both counts." House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, meanwhile, also lashed out:

[The budget] is not just misguided but dangerous to raise taxes on small businesses and families that can’t afford to pay them. In fact, a majority of those penalized by the proposed tax increase in this budget are small businesses.

President Obama, however, believes some Americans must make sacrifices for the greater good, like extending health-care benefits: "With this budget, we are making a historic commit to comprehensive health-care reform."