Patterico's Pontifications

2/24/2013

Obama Tells Falsehoods About the Origin of the Sequester, Says Noted Right-Wing Hack Bob Woodward

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 2:45 pm



Obama, moving the goal posts? Say it isn’t so, Bob Woodward!

The finger-pointing began during the third presidential debate last fall, on Oct. 22, when President Obama blamed Congress. “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

The White House chief of staff at the time, Jack Lew, who had been budget director during the negotiations that set up the sequester in 2011, backed up the president two days later.

“There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.

If Woodward is right, I could actually give Obama credit for something good: proposing some form of limiting spending. But it looks like he doesn’t want it. Surprise, surprise.

19 Responses to “Obama Tells Falsehoods About the Origin of the Sequester, Says Noted Right-Wing Hack Bob Woodward”

  1. Obama proposed limiting spending like Lucy proposed holding the football.

    SPQR (768505)

  2. Succubus is going to preside over one awful March. Every thing is turning down, every where.

    I am past caring.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  3. He also pledged to veto changes to it.

    JD (a9df10)

  4. Notice how jaded we are with the brazenness by which Obama lies about his own actions/positions.

    SPQR (768505)

  5. lying fascists are the very very worst kind

    cause of, you know

    at a certain point the trust is just gone

    happyfeet (acd614)

  6. Too bad the source in question is Woodward: he hasn’t had any credibility since he started using sources who were known to be in a coma at the time of the “interview” (Bill Casey, in Veil). He may well be telling the truth(given it’s Obama he’s talking about, he probably is)–but Obama’s fanboys could certain point to BW’s lack of credibility on those grounds.

    M. Scott Eiland (449af8)

  7. It happened back in July of last year, and there is footage where he doubled down,

    narciso (3fec35)

  8. Well July of the previous year,

    narciso (3fec35)

  9. Obama lies in the face of contradictory video with a brazenness that even Clinton is astonished by.

    SPQR (768505)

  10. Problem is when everything is a crisis as per The One nothing is a priority. A country needs leadership to bring stability, not constant unending conflict. There’s no way for anyone to plan for the economy nor make fiscal decisions long term.

    Bugg (b32862)

  11. You could have just titled this post “Obama Tells Falsehoods” and saved a small amount of bandwidth, Pat.

    Steve57 (60a887)

  12. Video is always good–Woodward certainly doesn’t add much in extra credibility to a video of it coming out of Obama’s mouth. Not that that will stop the MSM from trying to alibi it.

    M. Scott Eiland (449af8)

  13. Barry proposed the sequestering so he’d have another club he and his buddies at MSNBCBSABCNN can use on the Republicans. Gonna work too. The evening news mooks are already presenting the Barrinarrative as fact.

    glenn (647d76)

  14. Obama goal right now is to get the sequester a bad name so it can’t go on. If it turns out to produce no pain, the public will want more of it.

    Neo (d1c681)

  15. I’ll go with Both, and Neither.

    He sort-of proposed it. His party didn’t fuck him. The minority party doesn’t seem to give a damn. So there you go. Happy birthday.

    Jamie (029f5e)

  16. 9. They however, are teachable. ‘What difference, at this point, could it possibly make?’

    Vince Foster, Chris Steven, unavailable for comment.

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  17. 15. It’s not my birthday. Anyone here?

    gary gulrud (dd7d4e)

  18. Comment by SPQR (768505) — 2/24/2013 @ 4:03 pm

    Can’t wait for the video of Obama wagging his finger at the camera and exclaiming:
    “I did not have sequestration with that Congress!”

    askeptic (b8ab92)

  19. “There was an insistence on the part of Republicans in Congress for there to be some automatic trigger,” Lew said while campaigning in Florida. It “was very much rooted in the Republican congressional insistence that there be an automatic measure.”

    That’s true.

    “The sequester is not something that I’ve proposed,” Obama said. “It is something that Congress has proposed.”

    That’s not saying the same thing. It seems like this was an Obama counterproposal. The Republicans wanted the trigger to be the debt ceilinmg.

    Sammy Finkelman (d22d64)


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