President Barack Obama is calling on lawmakers to end what he called Washington’s cycle of manufactured crises and self-inflicted wounds and pass a budget that will help grow the economy. In his weekly address on Saturday, President Obama laid out his priorities for the budget that Congress began debating this week.

Obama said he favoured cutting wasteful tax loopholes to make room for programmes that helped build infrastructure and improve education. The President also highlighted his efforts at fiscal discipline saying that recent Treasury Department figures showed the U.S. government cut its deficit in half in fiscal 2013, to its lowest level since 2008.

Congressional Democrats and Republicans have less than three months to reach a deal on a new budget. The deadline to raise the U.S. borrowing limit comes just a few weeks after that.

Obamacare, as the law is known, was the topic of the weekly Republican address. Senator Dan Coats from the midwestern state of Indiana slammed the health care website, which has experienced a number of problems since it was unveiled last month.