Washington: The U.S. President Barack Obama announced its long-term debt plan, setting a goal to cut $4 trillion deficit over the next 12 years. Delivering a speech at George Washington University, Obama said, this deficit reduction is a balanced approach to maintaining economic recovery, Xinhua reported. Obama said his administration would take four steps to achieve debt balance, including savings on the defence budget, elimination of waste in healthcare spending, control of domestic expenditures and reform of the federal tax system. The White House projected that Obama's framework would reduce deficits as a share of U.S. economy to about 2.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2015, and put deficits on a declining path toward close to 2.0 percent of GDP towards the end of the decade. The US President said tackling the US budget deficit would require broad sacrifice. "We all have to make sacrifice but we do not have to sacrifice Americans." Obama, meanwhile, said that he would refuse to renew Bush-era tax breaks for wealthier Americans. "It is unfair to ask the elderly to pay more for healthcare while cutting taxes on the richest."