10 Apr 2013 Project 21 Members Pan Obama Budget

“Time is money” with dollar notes and hourglass

It’s late.

President Obama was required by law to submit his budget months ago.  He missed the deadline.

Obama has missed his budget deadline four times so far during his presidency.  He’s only been in office a little over four years.

Obama only just got around to unveiling his proposed 2014 budget today — April 10.  It was due February 4.

Both chambers of Congress — even the Senate, which had previously not passed a budget for most of Obama’s first term — managed to pass their own budgets well in advance of the President even unveiling his own plan.

But this is likely a calculated move by the Obama Administration.  Since the House and Senate have already acted, the Obama budget is pretty much dead on arrival.  After all, lawmakers on Capitol Hill already did their work.  Why should they go back to the drawing board?

Being so late gives Obama the chance to cherry-pick the good stuff, avoid the bad stuff and do whatever he wants to make himself look good with little fear that his plans are actually going to come to fruition.  It is a publicity stunt.  His past budgets haven’t been popular anyway.

Obama’s new budget is $3.77 trillion, and it proposes $661 billion in new taxes to be collected from the richest Americans to the poorest (through a regressive near doubling of the federal tobacco tax).  Savings comes from things such as cutting heating assistance to the poor and the phantom savings of not being militarily involved in Iraq anymore.

But there’s money for the controversial F-35 fighter, climate change, alternative energy sources that have already proven risky in the past and more money for the implementation of ObamaCare.

And Obama even threw in a class warfare mandate to increase the minimum wage to $9 for good measure.

What Obama’s budget seems to lack is support.  Politicoreports: “There were virually no full-throated statements in support of Obama’s budget.  Even Obama’s political arm, Organizing for Action, was silent on his budget…”  The Hispanic advocacy group National Council for LaRaza even says the Obama budget will “place an undue burden on vulnerable Latino seniors and families.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) lamented the my-way-or-the-highway attitude of the White Houseabout the proposal: “I would hope that [Obama] would not hold hostage these modest reforms [in his budget] for his demand for bigger tax hikes… Why don’t we find the common ground that we do have and move on that?”  National Economic Council director Gene Sperling already pointedly warned the Obama budget is “not an a la carte menu.”

Members of the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network are speaking out about the Obama budget proposal.

Project 21 member Derryck Green, for example, a frequent commenter on the economic travails of the Obama Administraion, notes:

Obama’s budget blueprint managed to do something not seen for some time on Capitol Hill — it appears to have brought both liberals and conservatives together.

Both sides are dismissing President Obama’s half-hearted and seemingly unserious attempt at submitting a sensible budget.

For the most part, the Obama budget represents a repetition of more tax increases, reduced deductions, more spending and is devoid of any serious attempt to reign in federal largesse and waste.  This is a flippant budget proposal by a flippant individual, and the gesture proves once again the President apparently cares more about enacting his ideological vision for a fundamental transformation of our society than he does about America’s economic future.

Project 21 member Stacy Swimp adds:

Obama’s budget is merely a red herring intended to distract from his continued determination to advance failed socialist policies.  He has not relented on his class warfare rhetoric and misguided Robin Hood complex.

Proposing to cut the budget by less than a trillion dollars over the next ten years, when we are currently well over $16 trillion in debt, is not a plan to succeed.  It is a plan to fail.

The American people needed President Obama to lead. They need him to put special interests such as the radical environmentalists and union bosses aside and do what is right for the nation.  Once again, however, Obama failed to deliver.

Obama is attempting to mask his socialist agenda with soundbites that he assumes he is governing from the center.  Neither his budget or his rhetoric have substance.

Mr. President, I am not fooled.