Filed under: Democrat Corruption, Domestic Policy, Foreign Policy, Law, National Security, Politics, The United States | Tags: Failing To Meet Deadlines, He Wants More Money to Spend, Nine Weeks Late
The Obama administration will release its 2014 budget more than two months late — on April 8, according to congressional sources.
Pentagon officials have informed the House Armed Services Committee that the budget is coming on April 8, and a Democratic congressional source confirmed that as the planned release date.
President Obama’s budget was due — by law — on February 4, the first Monday in February. The April release means the presidential budget will be nine weeks late.
Under the law, the president must submit a budget by the first Monday in February, but Obama has met the deadline only once.
White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest declined to confirm the budget delay. It is, of course, not Obama’s fault. Earnest pointed the finger at Congress when explaining the lengthy delay in producing a budget document.
“The budget has been delayed because some of the impediments that have been thrown in the path of those working on it,” Earnest said, citing the sequester and the “fiscal cliff” as complicating the budget forecast.”
The administration’s budget typically begins the annual budgeting process. It is the president’s request for funds and estimation of administration needs. Congress then shapes their budget resolutions based on the president’s request. This year the process is backwards as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray (D-WA) are planning to release their budgets next week. This will be the first time the Democrats in the Senate have managed to produce a budget in nearly 4 years. We’ve been running on “continuing resolutions,” not the way the government is supposed to operate.
The failure to meet deadlines on the part of the president throws a real monkey wrench into the process, which will be even more of a battle this year than usual. The president wants more money to spend. He is also completely immersed in his attempt to take back the House in 2014. The talk about jobs, deep concern for American workers, a flailing economy, and an alarming rise in international conflict, is to be set aside in the effort to blame Republicans for any and all problems, so that Democrats can make Nancy Pelosi Speaker again.
Americans are beginning to notice that in contrast to presidential claims, the job situation is not really improving. Yes, the economy created nearly 250,000 jobs, but more than 300,000 dropped out of the labor force, gave up and quit looking for a job. A GOP congressional aide said that the delay of the president’s budget is fueling what is already a high level of budget anxiety in the Pentagon, due to the sequester and the lack of a 2013 budget resolution. “It is precisely this kind of uncertainty that the uniformed senior commanders have asked Congress and the Commander in Chief to prevent.”
The increasing conflict in the Middle East does not stop because the president cannot come up with a budget, Iraq does not stop their efforts to develop a bomb, Assad does not stop attacking his people, North Korea continues threatening South Korea, and the military needs to know where the cuts to the military’s budget that the president is using for political purposes, is going to impact their ability to defend American interests around the world.
