By Susan Duclos
Setting aside the list of other lies that the media have exposed coming out of the White House over the sequestration, the law where $85 billion in across-the-board federal spending cuts are set to go into effect by 11:59 pm tonight, The Hill has a statement from Jay Carney that pretty much tops all the others.
Carney said the sequester cuts have already exacted their toll on the operations of government, including the crafting of the White House budget, which is weeks late and now expected in March.
"The series of manufactured crises around budget issues, certainly has resulted at least in part in those experts in the administration who work on those issues having to spend a lot of time dealing with those crises rather than on that,” he said. “But that's part of the job, and they're working on the budget."
The Obama administration informed House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that it will miss the legal deadline for sending a budget to Congress, back in January 2013, blaming the "fiscal cliff" negotiations for being late... this time.
The fact is this will be Obama’s fourth late budget submission in five years.
Heritage explains:
This will be Obama’s fourth late budget submission in five years. Indeed, he will now be the first President to present three consecutive late budgets. As Heritage has previously noted, Obama already is the first President to deliver three of his budgets late in just one term and the first to submit budgets late two years in a row.
He also holds the record for the latest budget submission: 98 days. Although this was during his first year in office, when Presidents’ budgets are often understandably delayed, he contributed to the problem by ramming through an $833 billion stimulus bill within a month of his inauguration. This President can’t bother budgeting when he’s busy spending.
For broader context, the House Budget Committee has helpfully posted the timing of all Presidents’ budgets since enactment of the 1921 Budget and Accounting Act, which created the formal executive budget process. The committee notes: “All presidents from Harding to Reagan’s first term met the statutory budget submission deadline in every year.”
This included five years in which deadline extensions were requested and granted—and then met. Even during World War II and Korea, the President’s budget reached Congress on time. With Obama, by contrast, meeting fiscal deadlines is an anomaly.
Nor has this President ever submitted a Mid-Session Review by July 16, as required by law.
Now the Obama administration is acting like the sequester, which hasn't gone into effect yet, is partially to blame for their inability to meet their legal deadlines and obey the law.
What exactly have those "experts in the administration who work on those issues" been working on all this time that has kept them too busy to present a timely budget?
Over to IBD:
Last week, New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote about how Obama "hasn't actually come up with a proposal to avert sequestration, let alone one that is politically plausible."
Turns out, Obama did have one, although Brooks can be excused for not knowing it, since the administration hasn't exactly been promoting this so-called plan.
That, too, is understandable, since it isn't a plan at all, just a list of numbers with little to back them up.
There are no details, for example, about the $200 billion in cuts to defense and domestic discretionary programs, other than that Obama wants them split evenly.
And while he offers $400 billion in "health savings," 30% are lumped in a bucket labeled "other."
Worse, Obama's "balanced" plan actually counts hundreds of billions of new revenues from taxes, fees and rebates as "spending reductions." Examples:
• His plan to "strengthen" unemployment insurance is labeled as a cut, but it's really a $50 billion tax hike.
• The $35 billion from the federal worker retirement programs involves boosting worker contributions.
• Most of the $35 billion in Medicare savings comes from charging wealthy seniors more.
• The $140 billion in "reduced payments to drug companies" are in fact rebates Obama wants drugmakers to pay Uncle Sam for selling drugs to poor seniors.
• Then there's the $45 billion in spectrum fees and asset sales that Obama lists as spending reductions.
Viewed correctly, it turns out that more than $300 billion — about a third — of Obama's proposed "spending cuts" are actually revenue increases.
The White House "experts" have been very busy, trying to craft language that defines more tax increases as "cuts."
Turns out, lying to the American public is time consuming work for the Obama administration.
