Northwest Indiana Discussion

Obama Blamed GOP For Pending Cuts

Education Secretary Arne Duncan appeared in the White House briefing room Wednesday with a warning about the effects of sequestration on the nation’s schools.

“Kids are gonna get hurt, kids are gonna get hurt. That’s just the reality,” he said. His visit to the briefing room followed recent appearances by Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

Duncan expressed real frustration with Congress for being unable to avoid the spending cuts due to begin taking effect on Friday. The dysfunction is “unimaginable,” he said, and makes him “angry” because students will be “taking steps backwards because folks in Washington can’t get their acts together.”

They are finally going to have a meeting.

A congressional source with direct knowledge of the plans tells me the top four congressional leaders – John Boehner, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Mitch McConnell – will meet with President Obama at the White House Friday to attempt to negotiate a way to avoid the spending cuts that both sides have said should be avoided.

This meeting – the first one the president has had with Republican leaders to talk about the across-the-board cuts known as the sequester – will come after the cuts actually go into effect (midnight Thursday).

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney would not confirm the meeting, but the source told ABC News that the White House reached out to the congressional leadership Tuesday afternoon to request the meeting.

Never let it be said that President Obama has failed to spend time with Republican leaders in seeking an alternative to automatic budget cuts that are due to hit most federal departments Friday. On Wednesday, for example, the president gave GOP lawmakers as much as seven minutes, a rare face-to-face encounter that the White House described as a “meeting.”

The White House’s characterization of this momentary huddle at the Capitol as a meeting illuminates Mr. Obama’s strategy in dealing with Republicans on the budget cuts and other fiscal deadlines.

With speeches and other staged events, the president has tried to build public pressure for his agenda of tax increases coupled with spending cuts.

But he has made little time for negotiating directly with lawmakers who oppose his plans.

“It is a sincere conviction among Republicans that the president’s negotiating posture isn’t about getting a deal done, it’s a zero-sum political game where his aim is to destroy the Republican [House] majority in the next election,” said Steve Schmidt, a Republican strategist who served in 2008 as Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign manager. “It’s certainly not an effective strategy for a leader in search of a deal.”

President Obama prefers the “meat cleaver” approach of sequestration to any policy that would allow him to implement the spending cuts more selectively, as his administration threatened to a Republican proposal to that effect because it does not include a tax increase.

While no amount of flexibility can avoid the fact that middle class families will bear the brunt of the cuts required by this bill, nothing is asked of the wealthiest Americans,” the White House Office of Management and Budget said in a statement on a bill introduced by Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., and Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., today. “If the President were presented with [the Inhofe-Toomey bill], his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”

Obama’s veto threat comes one day after the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, which is promising massive layoffs and air traffic delays if the sequester takes place, suggested that the FAA could handle the cuts if they had more flexibility.

Have we put together a plan to cut $20 billion between March and October?" Graham said. "No, the House passed a plan to substitute sequestration.The Senate Republicans have yet to offer a plan.."

"We'll criticize everything he does," Graham acknowledged. "We'll say, 'Mr. President, it is now up to you to find this $85 billion in savings and we'll say it’s to make it easier for you.' But every decision he’ll make, we'll criticize."

Most voters continue to see raising taxes as worse for the nation’s economy than cutting government spending. A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 54% of Likely Voters think raising taxes is more likely to hurt the economy than cutting government spending. Twenty-seven percent (27%) see cutting spending as worse, while 11% say neither will hurt the economy.

The debt of the federal government has now increased by $6 trillion during the time that Barack Obama has been president, according to the U.S. Treasury.

At the close of business on Jan. 20, 2009, the day Obama was first inaugurated, the debt of the federal government was $10,626,877,048,913.08. At the close of business on Thursday, Feb. 28, the debt of the federal government hit $16,687,289,180,215.37.

That means that so far during Obama’s presidency, the total debt of the federal government has increased by $6,060,412,131,302.29.

According to the latest estimate from the Census Bureau, there are 115,031,000 households in the United States. Thus, the debt of the federal government has increased by approximately $52,685 per household during Obama’s time in office.

President Barack Obama orders sequestration. Here’s the text of the executive order:

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
For Immediate Release
March 1, 2013

SEQUESTRATION ORDER FOR FISCAL YEAR 2013 PURSUANT
TO SECTION 251A OF THE BALANCED BUDGET AND
EMERGENCY DEFICIT CONTROL ACT, AS AMENDED

By the authority vested in me as President by the laws
of the United States of America, and in accordance with
section 251A of the Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit
Control Act, as amended (the “Act”), 2 U.S.C. 901a, I hereby
order that budgetary resources in each non-exempt budget account
be reduced by the amount calculated by the Office of Management
and Budget in its report to the Congress of March 1, 2013.

Pursuant to sections 250(c)(6), 251A, and 255(e) of the
Act, budgetary resources subject to sequestration shall be new
budget authority, unobligated balances of defense function
accounts carried over from prior fiscal years, direct spending
authority, and obligation limitations.

All sequestrations shall be made in strict accordance with
the requirements of section 251A of the Act and the
specifications of the Office of Management and Budget’s report
of March 1, 2013, prepared pursuant to section 251A(11) of the
Act.

BARACK OBAMA

THE WHITE HOUSE,
March 1, 2013.

President Obama and his family are likely headed to Martha’s Vineyard for a summer sojourn again this year.

A source tells POLITICO that the Secret Service has started booking accomodations on the toney island off the Massachusetts coast.

So far, the White House isn’t saying anything, but the Vineyard is abuzz with the news. The first family is expected toward the end of August, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Obama had to skip his traditional Vineyard vacation last year as he campaigned for reelection. But he and his family went there for three summers before that.

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, said Claude Chafin, a committee spokesman. A Democratic congressional source confirmed that is the planned release date.

The April release means President Obama’s budget will be nine weeks late, as it was due by law on Feb. 4, the first Monday in February.

Republicans have slammed Obama for delaying the budget so far past the deadline.

“This indicates a troubling unwillingness to lead,” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee, said of the new delay. “It is odd to me that the president would not have a plan and want the Congress to consider it.”

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded $1.5 million to study biological and social factors for why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not, calling it an issue of “high public-health significance.”

Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Mass., has received two grants administered by NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) to study the relationship between sexual orientation and obesity.

“Obesity is one of the most critical public health issues affecting the U.S. today,” the description of the grant reads. “Racial and socioeconomic disparities in the determinants, distribution, and consequences of obesity are receiving increasing attention.”

“However, one area that is only beginning to be recognized is the striking interplay of gender and sexual orientation in obesity disparities,” it states.

While sixth-graders beg President Barack Obama to let them visit the White House, the president will still be practicing his golf swing.

After the Obama administration announced the White House would be canceling all tours due to the sequester, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) suggested that Obama not use federal money for golfing until the White House reopens its doors.

But when asked about this simple request on Friday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest refused to respond and attacked Republicans for calling sequestration cuts “great news” and “cheering” on the cuts.

The White House said that they could not afford the Secret Service necessary to watch over the self-guided White House tours, but Obama’s golf outings also require Secret Service.

Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Budget Committee, finally released a budget today. Year over year, in this proposed budget, spending jumps dramatically.

For instance, from this year’s budget to next year’s proposed budget, spending would increase by $162 billion. This year, the federal government will spend $3.599 trillion; under Murray’s budget, the federal government would be on track to spend even more.

“Murray’s budget spends $2.2 trillion more in 2023 (the last year of the budget window) than the 2013 levels – a 62% increase (significantly outpacing inflation),” says a staff member on the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee.