Under law, the White House must submit a budget this year by February 4. According to the Hill,
Late Friday evening, Deputy Director Zients confirmed that for the fourth time in five years, the president’s budget will not be submitted in compliance with the law,”
Only 1 budget out of 4 have been submitted on time — the budget in 2010. The rest of the years, the budgets were late. That year, the budget failed in the Senate 0-97. And last year, the President’s budget failed 0-414. Not one Democrat or Republican voted for them or was willing to sponsor them, because they were so outrageous.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we actually have a functioning budget for the United State. The Senate has not passed a budget since April 29, 2009 — which is currently 1356 days and running.
It’s okay to break the law when it comes to submitting a budget but dammit, we MUST NOT break the law when it comes to our ability to spend bumping up against the debt ceiling, or else “Social Security benefits and veterans’ checks will be delayed”, Obama sternly warned today.
And yet, in 2006, Obama voted against the debt ceiling. The NRO reports that Obama said at the time,:
“The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. Government can’t pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government’s reckless fiscal policies. … Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that ‘the buck stops here. Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better”.
We certainly wouldn’t want to know what kind of spending proposals and debt problems are in Obama’s new budget now, would we?
Obama once again, is the president of “Do as I say, not as I do”.