Post by Bonnie on Oct 26, 2012 8:18:01 GMT -5
Obama's fanciful claim that Congress proposed the sequester
By Glenn Kessler
Published: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 6:02 AM
The sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.
President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012
As the saying goes, success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan. And if there ever is an orphan in Washington these days, it is that odd duck known as sequestration.
We have earlier written that there are bipartisan fingerprints
all over the looming defense cuts that Mitt Romney has sought to pin on President Obama. Now, in the final presidential debate, Obama sought to toss the hot potato of sequestration - the process that is forcing those defense cuts and reductions in domestic spending- into Congress's lap.
Fortunately, there is a detailed and contemporaneous look at the debt ceiling deal that led to the current budget crunch: Bob Woodward's The Price of Politics
The book clearly had the full cooperation of top White House and congressional officials. With the help of our colleague, we took a tour through the relevant sections in order to determine the accuracy of the presidents statement.
The Facts
The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package. Woodwards book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.
Page 215 (July 12, 2011):
They turned to [White House national economic council director Gene] Sperling for details about a compulsory trigger if they didn't cut spending or raise taxes in an amount at least equivalent to the debt ceiling increase.... to continue
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-fanciful-claim-that-congress-proposed-the-sequester/2012/10/25/8651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html
By Glenn Kessler
Published: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 26, 6:02 AM
The sequester is not something that I've proposed. It is something that Congress has proposed.
President Obama, in the third presidential debate, Oct. 22, 2012
As the saying goes, success has a thousand fathers, while failure is an orphan. And if there ever is an orphan in Washington these days, it is that odd duck known as sequestration.
We have earlier written that there are bipartisan fingerprints
all over the looming defense cuts that Mitt Romney has sought to pin on President Obama. Now, in the final presidential debate, Obama sought to toss the hot potato of sequestration - the process that is forcing those defense cuts and reductions in domestic spending- into Congress's lap.
Fortunately, there is a detailed and contemporaneous look at the debt ceiling deal that led to the current budget crunch: Bob Woodward's The Price of Politics
The book clearly had the full cooperation of top White House and congressional officials. With the help of our colleague, we took a tour through the relevant sections in order to determine the accuracy of the presidents statement.
The Facts
The battle over raising the debt ceiling consumed Washington in the summer of 2011, with Republicans refusing to agree to raise it unless spending was cut by an equivalent amount. Obama pressed but failed to get an agreement on raising revenue as part of the package. Woodwards book details the efforts to come up with an enforcement mechanism that would make sure the cuts took place and virtually every mention shows this was a White House gambit.
Page 215 (July 12, 2011):
They turned to [White House national economic council director Gene] Sperling for details about a compulsory trigger if they didn't cut spending or raise taxes in an amount at least equivalent to the debt ceiling increase.... to continue
www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/obamas-fanciful-claim-that-congress-proposed-the-sequester/2012/10/25/8651dc6a-1eed-11e2-ba31-3083ca97c314_blog.html