◼ Under the Budget Control Act of 2011, which will implement approximately $53.8 billion of sequestration cuts to outlays in 2013, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) was required to submit to Congress its plan for implementing the cuts.
That should have been presented, along with its annual budget “[o]n or after the first Monday in January but not later than the first Monday in February of each year.”
As of Feb. 11, OMB has still not submitted its budget for the year along with its sequester plan — despite having almost two years to plan, including a two month delay to sequester that was supposed to kick in on Jan. 2.
Instead, the White House dropped a bombshell “fact sheet” on Friday, Feb. 8 to scare everyone — Congress, media outlets, and the American people — into submission. It doesn’t want any cuts to occur.
Or anyone to see just how small those cuts really are, we might add...
Fortunately, under the Sequestration Transparency Act of 2012, OMB did prepare a line-by-line preliminary estimate of how sequester will affect every single agency. ◼ Read it for yourself and decide.
As taxpayers you are entitled to know the truth, and to have a ready means of verifying some of the White House’s assertions.
