Four days after the Treasury Department released its plans for revamping the housing market, the White House is proposing a budget that will cut the federal deficit from making up roughly 10% of the overall economy to 3% of the economy in a decade, according to Jack Lew, director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. Lew said in a White House video Sunday that the financial downturn combined with federal tax and spending policies created a federal deficit that the White House hopes to reduce by half in the next three years. “The challenge is we need to get to a place that is sustainable,” Lew said. Lew told CNN Monday morning “it’s a tough budget” that includes $1.1 trillion in cuts. One of the cuts will be to the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which assists low-income families by covering a portion of their household energy expenses. Lew said while the cuts are tough, programs such as the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance plan were implemented when energy prices were dramatically high, an issue that he says has subsided in recent years. Write to Kerri Panchuk.