WH: If You Cut Our Budget It Will Make It Harder to Cut The Budget

The Obama White House is apparently serious about this:

Proposed House cuts to the Executive Office of the President’s (EOP) budget will hurt administration efforts to cut the deficit, the White House argues.

The Obama administration made the argument in comments on H.R. 2434, the 2012 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Act. That bill could be on the House floor as early as next week, and would decrease funding for the EOP from $705 million to $640 million.

“The level of resources provided in the bill would significantly impact the EOP’s role in assisting the president in carrying out his constitutional duties as head of the executive branch, including protecting national security interests, developing policies to address the challenges facing the nation, reducing the deficit and spending taxpayer dollars more cost-effectively, and managing the Federal agencies,” the administration said in a statement of administration policy (SAP).

Staff at this White House make better than average scratch: 141 of them make over $100k. Twenty-eight of them are lawyers. This year, WH staff got raises that doubled up on the national average while unemployment for the rest of us just keeps going up. But this is where we are, with an administration that has spent us into a ditch but won’t countenance a real budget cut at all. They will throw around a lot of talk for the media, but in negotiations they will offer up what amounts to a rounding error on the national budget. And when pressed to make a sacrifice — a word this White House loves to use when discussing others — they will not do it. The phrase “lead by example” seems to be part of some foreign language to this bunch.