{"id":13041,"date":"2012-02-16T20:14:29","date_gmt":"2012-02-17T01:14:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=13041"},"modified":"2012-02-16T20:14:29","modified_gmt":"2012-02-17T01:14:29","slug":"bad-week-for-obama-budget-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/13041\/bad-week-for-obama-budget-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad Week for Obama Budget Director"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a bad week for Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients, the man tasked with defending President Barack Obama\u2019s 2013 budget proposal.<\/p>\n<p>In testimony before the House Budget Committee Zients told Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) that the penalty for not complying with ObamaCare\u2019s mandate to buy health insurance is <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970204880404577225673473974522.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_AboveLEFTTop\" target=\"_blank\">not a tax increase<\/a>.\u00a0 (Subscription wall.)\u00a0 In response, Rep. Garrett said, \u201cOkay.\u00a0 I just want to be clear on that because that\u2019s not the argument the Administration is making before the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Before the Senate Budget Committee Zients was even more out-of-touch.\u00a0 Under questioning from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Zients claimed that Obama\u2019s 2013 budget contained spending cuts \u2013 a distortion Sessions would <a href=\"http:\/\/freebeacon.com\/video-omb-director-challenged-to-resign-after-refusing-to-answer-simple-budget-question\/\" target=\"_blank\">not tolerate<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Mr. Zients, there are no spending cuts in this budget. This budget increases spending. Surely you know that. It increases taxes. So to say you cut $2.50 in spending for every dollar in tax increase is beyond the pale.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So too is the entire shell game about \u2018deficit reduction\u2019 when what liberals like Obama really mean is tax increases to pay for spending increases.\u00a0 If the President won\u2019t admit it at least his budget director will be made to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s been a bad week for Office of Management and Budget Director Jeff Zients, the man tasked with defending President Barack Obama\u2019s 2013 budget proposal. In testimony before the House Budget Committee Zients told Rep. Scott Garrett (R-NJ) that the penalty for not complying with ObamaCare\u2019s mandate to buy health insurance is not a tax [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,70,1649,3361,35,61,105],"class_list":["post-13041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-barack-obama","tag-budget","tag-jeff-sessions","tag-jeffrey-zients","tag-obamacare","tag-spending","tag-tax"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13041"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13045,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13041\/revisions\/13045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}