Looking for compromise, President Obama's proposed budget, which which was leaked today, but will be officially released next Wednesday, calls for significant reductions to the growth of Social Security and other benefit programs in exchange for further tax hikes.

A senior White House official said the budget proposal offered changes to the programs in order to convince Republicans to accept further tax hikes. The official pointed out that the proposal wasn’t “a menu of options for them to choose from, it is a cohesive package.”

The senior official continued saying, “While this is not the president’s ideal deficit-reduction plan, and there are particular proposals in this plan like the CPI change that were key Republican requests and not the president’s preferred approach, this is a compromise proposal built on common ground and the president felt it was important to make it clear that the offer still stands.”

The Whitehouse’s proposal that will change Social Security’s cost-of-living calculation, that will mean a reduction in benefits to some recipients, such as the poor, veterans and the elderly is sure to ire some in the Democratic Party, retirees and labor groups. But, the offer to do so is calculated to win enough Republicans over to pass a budget deal to reduce the deficit.

Democrats are arguing that the sequester that recently went into effect cuts too deep and are continuing to call for more tax increases to close the deficit. House Peaker John Boehner disagrees.

On Friday, Boehner dismissed the proposal out-of-hand, saying, “If the president believes these modest entitlement savings are needed to help shore up these programs, there’s no reason they should be held hostage for more tax hikes.”

“At some point we need to solve our spending problem, and what the president has offered would leave us with a budget that never balances,” Boehner said. “In reality, he’s moved in the wrong direction, routinely taking off the table entitlement reforms he’s previously told me he could support.”

Obama’s plan proposes to place limits on tax-preferred retirement accounts for wealthy Americans as well as limits on tax deductions for top earners. The plan would also replace the sequester with other spending cuts, while stopping major spending cuts to Medicare and reductions to the health care plan for the poor.