Our president, Barack Obama, continues to behave as if the law does not apply to him. In a flagrant violation of the law he swore to uphold, the president will miss yet another budget deadline this year, marking the 18th time it has done so, according to Senate Republicans.
“The Office of Management and Budget recently announced that President Obama’s FY 2015 budget would be delivered to Congress on March 4, just over one month past the statutory deadline (which requires the President’s budget to be submitted by the first Monday in February),” Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, said in a statement.
“This will be the 18th occasion that the Administration has missed an in-law budget deadline,” Sessions added.
Once again the president believes that it is not necessary to comply with the budgetary law as it is written.
Obama’s White House seems to have a serious problem complying with budgetary deadlines set by Congress. In fact, as noted by Sessions’ staff, the Obama administration has missed every deadline to submit a budget since he first took office in 2009.
Further, the White House has “never submitted a plan to control Medicare spending following a Medicare funding warning,” according to the Washington Examiner.
This would appear to be a serious problem considering that the law specifically states that “if there is a Medicare funding warning … made in a year, the president shall submit to Congress, within the 15-day period beginning on the date of the budget submission to Congress under subsection (a) for the succeeding year, proposed legislation to respond to such warning.”
Medicare warnings were issued (and promptly ignored) in 2010, 2011 and 2012.
“Obama’s team has not submitted a final sequestration transparency report, which was due Jan. 21 of this year. They were late submitting the earlier installation of the report,” the Washington Examiner reported. “Obama’s team was also late filing mid-session reviews in 2010, 2011, and 2011. The financial reports on the United States were filed late in 2009, 2011, and 2012.”
In short, the Obama administration seems to be totally incapable of meeting budgetary deadlines put in place by Congress.
