Part of the economic agenda is to find a way to reduce long-term spending on Social Security - the pension system - and the government-run health programmes Medicare and Medicaid.
In the next two decades Medicare, which provides healthcare for the retired and disabled, is projected to consume one-quarter of the national budget. Mr Obama also wants to reform Social Security. By 2011 the pension fund will take in less revenue than it pays out. Mr Obama will have to raise taxes and reduce payments.
Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House Speaker, and other party leaders have been so fierce in their resistance to reducing pension payments that Mr Obama abandoned a plan to announce a Social Security task force at the summit.
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