Obama Misses Deadline For Reporting Proposed Defense Cuts To Congress

President Barack Obama on Friday missed the legal deadline for reporting to Congress about what spending cuts, including those to defense, the White House would propose as part of the sequestration that the Budget Control Act mandates.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the report, which will have to detail $109 billion in proposed budget cuts, will be submitted next week.  

In August, Obama signed the Sequestration Transparency Act, which required him to submit the report to Congress by Friday. 

And even worse, as Bob Woodward reveals in his book, The Price of Politics, the idea for sequestration had actually “originated in the White House – and not in Congress”

According to the book, White House Chief of Staff Jack Lew, who was then-OMB director, pitched the idea to Harry Reid because they felt the prospect of “massive defense cuts would compel Republicans to agree to the so-called ‘grand bargain.'” 

Mitt Romney on Friday tweeted, “The President is required by law to tell the people how he would implement defense cuts, but chooses to ignore the deadline for doing so.”

And House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) called Obama’s actions “shameful and irresponsible.” 

“The sequester originated from this White House, yet it refuses to level with the American people about the devastating impact it will have on our country,” Boehner said. “By proposing the sequester, the president put his own election campaign ahead of the interests of the country.”

This is not the first time the Obama administration has missed key legal deadlines. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) has been late in delivering the White House’s budget proposals for the last two years.