Obama Budget Hitting Students Hard

MIAMI (CBS4) At a time when South Florida schools are bracing for hundreds of millions of dollars of cuts from the state; President Barack Obama's new federal budget will hit poorer students face more debt or not have a chance to go to college.

Schools in Broward and Miami-Dade County's are set to lose a combined $419 million under the new budget from Florida Governor Rick Scott.

President Obama is following that up with a budget that will cut Pell grant funding and reduce loan subsidies for graduate students. The combined savings from the cuts will be roughly $89 billion over 10 years.

However, with the average amount of debt for graduate students exceeding $40,000 and medical students facing more than $100,000 in debt, it's going to be tough for President Obama to push the cuts to the students who helped elect him last year.

The budget cuts from the President's budget come as the federal deficit is expected to hit record levels this year of nearly $1.5 trillion. But, the two-year extension of the Bush tax cuts increased the deficit by roughly $858 billion, which makes the deficit numbers, while large, not as bad as some have painted.

In addition, the White House has now revised forecasts saying that the overall growth of the economy will be slower and the unemployment rate will still be around 8.6 percent when President Obama begins his re-election campaign in 2012. It would be the highest unemployment rate ever during a presidential election year.

Obama's overall budget is $3.73 trillion, but pledges $1.1 trillion in deficit savings over the next decade, according to the Associated Press. The budget also has a five-year freeze on domestic spending and will limit tax deductions for high-income taxpayers.