The budget that Barack Obama’s administration released on Thursday is not settled policy. A multi-volume request to Congress comes in April and then Capitol Hill will go to work. This week’s blueprint matters, though, because it is a more detailed plan of the new president’s aims than we have so far seen. In a firmly left-leaning proposal, two things stand out.

First, Mr Obama is serious about comprehensive healthcare reform and hopes to make high-income households pay for it. This would be a bold project at any time, let alone when the public purse must contend with the demands of stimulus spending and financial stabilisation. Allowing for new bank bail-out money, the current year’s deficit is expected to be $1,750bn, more than 12 per cent of GDP. Undaunted, Mr Obama wants to set aside more than $600bn in tax increases and spending cuts over 10 years as a down payment on healthcare reform.