President Obama got his priorities mostly right in the new $3.8 trillion budget for the fiscal year 2011. It calls for increased spending on education and clean energy technology, shows some restraint on the defense budget, and, most importantly, calls for more spending on job creation. It also rightly lets the Bush-era tax cuts for high-income Americans expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

When all the new spending and spending cuts are added in, and various tax increases and tax cuts are accounted for, the increase in the deficit, compared with what it would have been without any changes, is $120 billion. That is a lot of money. But it is not too much at a time of economic weakness, when deficit spending is needed to boost growth and put Americans back to work.

Still, if you’re feeling sticker shock, we are, too. It is important to remember that most of that $3.8 trillion, nearly $2.4 trillion, is for mandatory spending  on programs like Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and for interest on the national debt. Medicare and Medicaid alone will cost $788 billion; that should be another reminder of why the country needs health care reform.

Congress also cannot waste any more time posturing about the deficit rather than doing what is needed to get Americans back to work.