Liberals Suddenly Incensed About Budget Process Obama Blew Off For Eight Years

The latest Leftist hypocrisy is in, and it’s a doozy. Progressives are losing their minds over President Trump’s budget proposal for all sorts of reasons. Under his legal obligation, President Trump submitted his proposed budget to Congress for approval. If you listen to the Democrat Media Complex, it will hurt the poor, the young, the elderly, the rural, the vulnerable, the arts, the sciences, Big Bird, and federal workers.

In typical liberal self-unaware fashion, progressives fail to remember how President Obama blew off his legal obligation to submit a budget proposal by the statutory deadline in seven of his eight years at the helm. Now, I know that strict adherence to the law is not the strong suit of Democrats, but you’d think they’d at least give lip service to holding their guy to some set of standards. Those tardy Obama budget requests were eventually received by Congress—and laughed out of the chamber. In a 414-0 wipeout vote in 2012, for instance, Obama achieved rare bipartisanship, with both parties uniting in opposition to his silly proposals. Two other times the Senate brought Obama’s budgetary framework up for a vote—despite his reticence to file it formally—just for the fun of seeing it receive 99 and 98 Nay votes, respectively.

I know the Lightbringer did transcendent things that mere mortals fail to understand, but one of those things was to not follow the legal obligations of the office of the president. There was a law passed, way back in 1921, called the Budget and Accounting Act. This law requires the president to present his budget proposal for funding the government between the first week of January and the first week of February. Presidents who bother to follow the law typically wait until February in order to give the Office of Management and Budget time to work out the details.

Now, President Trump was, technically, a couple of weeks late in presenting his budget. One can understand, however, that as a first-time executive, he was still assembling his team. At least he bothered to try. It is typical for incoming presidents to need a couple of extra weeks to assemble a proposal. Obama’s first budget request in 2009 wasn’t submitted until freaking May, for a budget starting Oct 1.

In a post in January 2012, the House Budget Committee noted, “This failure to meet statutory budget obligations has become a pernicious pattern for the President and his party’s leaders. For over 1,000 days, Senate Democrats have failed to pass a budget resolution, ignoring the legal requirement to pass a budget resolution by April 15 of each year.” As they point out, no other administration in history was so brazen in its disregard for the statutory requirement to submit a budget. Indeed, Obama holds several records: longest delay in submitting a proposal (98 days); first president to miss the deadline two years in a row; first president to miss the deadline in three of his first four years; and of course, most times missing the deadline. The only other president to miss this deadline, outside the first year of their term, was another Democrat — Bill Clinton in 1998, who was dealing with other stuff at the time and was understandably distracted.

The committee further elaborated on Obama’s blatant disregard for his legal requirements. The president is required to submit a mid-session budget review every July; a financial report of the government in December; and a plan to remedy the financial condition of Medicare within 15 days of a funding warning by the Medicare Trustees. Guess how many times President Obama complied with those legal obligations?

If you guessed zero, you are today’s winner.

Why, it’s almost as if Obama wanted to escape scrutiny of his financial plans for the nation by avoiding any official reports at all.

So yeah, go ahead and criticize President Trump for his budget and his blatant disregard for whichever interest group you represent that has become dependent on federal support. Unlike the last guy, at least he’s willing to comply with federal law and submit his budget proposal for public scrutiny.