Capitol Hill Republicans were shocked at the Feb. 14 testimony by the White House budget chief, part of the White House misinformation campaign in favor of the president’s fiscal year 2013 budget released Monday.
Speaking before the Senate Budget Committee, Jeffrey D. Zients, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, refused to answer a direct yes-or-no question from the committee’s ranking member Sen. Jefferson B. Sessions III (R-Ala.): Does the president’s budget increase spending more than the 2011 Budget Control Act?In a sputtering response, Zients tried to answer the question he wanted to be asked instead of the one he was asked.
What Sessions did not appreciate was that although the president’s budget eliminates the structure of the Budget Control Act, which reduced spending increases by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, Obama’s inclusion of higher taxes on the wealthy and strategic increases in spending was a more balanced approach, the budget director said.
The balanced approach meant that for every $2.50 in spending cuts, there would be $1 in new taxes, he said.
Sessions asked again: Yes or No? “We have a much more honest baseline... Our budget is a more honest budget... It’s a more accurate reflection of what we’re gonna spend... It’s actually going to spend less money” Zients said.
When the budget director finally seemed to say, in the context of his hedges, that spending would decrease, rather than increase in the president’s budget compared to current law, Sessions asked him, “If you are incorrect in saying that you do not increase spending compared to current law, would you consider resigning your office?”
Zients laughed, then replied, “Let me go back to the balanced approach.”
Frustrated, Sessions, who clearly had heard enough, went in for the kill.
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