The Weekly Standard reported Wednesday that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney contradicted President Barack Obama’s claim that the decision to close down White House tours “was not– a decision that went up to the White House. But th– what the Secret Service explained to us was that they’re gonna have to furlough some folks” by "admitting the White House in fact cancelled tours."
It wasn't the first time someone in the Obama administration confessed that the president's claim was inaccurate.
"The sequester is not something that I've proposed,” The Washington Post quoted Obama saying during the Oct. 22 presidential debate. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”
On March 3, Forbes reported that the White House had admitted “for the third time” that Obama “fibbed.”
“The little secret of sequestration is that the Obama administration could fix much of the problem pretty quickly,” Byron York wrote for The Battle Creek Enquirer Tuesday. “But it doesn’t want to.”
As Examiner reported March 5 -- as the sequester deadline approached, and in the days since it took effect -- Obama and members of his administration have been engaged in an ongoing endeavor to warn Americans of the catastrophic consequences and blaming Republicans in Congress for their pending pain.
“If the sequester goes into effect,” Obama warned workers at the Newport News Shipyard in Virginia Feb. 26, “more than 2,000 college students would lose their financial aid.”
“As part of its strategy to pressure Republicans into accepting new revenues as part of a deal to prevent the sequester from taking effect,” The Huffington Post reported Feb. 24 that the White House released “51 reports” that detailed “the ugly effects those cuts would have in individual states.”
The document sent to Maryland included a warning by the Centers for Disease Control that -- due to an estimated $30 million in sequestration cuts to the national vaccine program – the reduced funding for vaccinations of about $140,000 in Maryland would mean “2,050 fewer children will get vaccines for diseases like measles and whooping cough.”
However, The Washington Examiner reported Tuesday that -- during a meeting of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies -- Maryland Republican Rep. Andy Harris – a medical doctor -- asked the administration’s Centers of Disease Control Director Tom Frieden to explain a discrepancy.
Why would the administration insist that $30 million in sequester cuts to the program cause children to go without vaccines but assure Americans that the $58 million cut to the program -- proposed in Obama’s 2013 budget proposal -- would not?
While Obama proposed to cut $58 million to the program that provides vaccines to American children – and his sequester cuts $30 million -- his 2013 budget proposal “also includes an increase of $15 million to eradicate polio within India and reduce transmission of the wild polio virus in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria by the end of 2013.”
As reported by Politico March 5, fact checkers have already “shot down” six of the Obama administration’s predictions of sequester doom.
As the administration continues to issue warnings of federal employee “furloughs,” PJ Media revealed Monday that a search of new jobs being offered by the federal government “over the past 10 days, yielded 2,596 results.”
Since the announcement by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that furlough notices issued to customs officers and airport security screeners caused by sequester cutbacks had already increased lines at airports by “150 percent to 200 percent” – a claim that has since been debunked -- DHS has announced that it’s looking to fill 107 new positions.
The Agriculture Department -- which warned that possible furloughs of meat inspectors would put Americans at risk of falling ill from tainted food – has posted openings for 115 new jobs.
In the meantime, CNS News reported Monday that the federal government spent $1.5 million in taxpayer dollars to study why “three-quarters” of lesbians are obese and why gay males are not.
As John Kass of The Chicago Tribune wrote last month of “the whoppers” coming from the Obama administration regarding the effects of the sequester cuts – designed by his administration -- are intended to convince Americans that “the sky is falling” and that Republicans are to blame.
But as York explained Tuesday -- while “Congress tells executive branch agencies how much money they can spend and how they should spend it” and “Cabinet secretaries and lower-downs are bound to work within those congressional directives” – Cabinet officers could have the power to “spend the money differently” if they would simply ask Congress for permission to do so.
“That could be happening now,” York revealed. “All those Obama administration officials complaining about across-the-board cuts dictated by sequestration could come up with plans to make the same amount of cuts in ways that would create fewer problems for federal workers and services. Then they could ask Congress for permission to do so. Lawmakers would say yes, and things would be fine.”
But it’s not happening. And the fault is not with Congress.
“We sent out on Feb. 28 a letter to every Cabinet officer asking them what changes they’d like to have — pluses, subtractions and so on — to give them an opportunity to show us at least one program they would like to have cut, which would then save on sequestration,” York quoted Republican House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa saying in an interview last week. “We did not receive a single answer.”
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