WASHINGTON — President Obama will seek to cut the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term, according to an administration official. Most of the savings would come from spending less on the war in Iraq, raising taxes on those who make more than $250,000 a year and streamlining government, the official told CNN. The president’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2010 projects that the estimated $1.3 trillion deficit he inherited from the Bush administration will be halved to $533 billion by 2013, or from 9.2 percent of the gross domestic product to 3 percent, the official said. The official declined to speak on the record because Obama has yet to unveil the proposal, which was expected to happen Thursday. In his weekly address Saturday, Obama pledged to ‘release a budget that’s sober in its assessments, honest in its accounting, and lays out in detail my strategy for investing in what we need, cutting what we don’t, and restoring fiscal discipline.’ From 2001 to 2008, Congress appropriated about $173 billion in taxpayer funds toward war-related efforts in Afghanistan and $657 billion in Iraq, according to estimates by the Congressional Research Service. […]