Jamie Dupree's Washington Insider: Selling the Obama Budget

There's nothing quite like the full court press that is undertaken by a White House after the introduction of a President's budget. You flood Capitol Hill with top cabinet and agency officials and then the President heads on the road to tout certain items.

And both parties do their best to follow their pre-planned partisan script on whether the fiscal package sells the country down the river or builds a bridge for the future across that same body of water.

Day One of the 2012 Congressional Budget Blitz belonged to the Defense and Treasury secretaries, along with the acting White House budget chief; today all three are back, along with seven other top administration officials for more questions.

Meanwhile, the President will start a three day trip, hopping on Air Force One to head to Milwaukee, where he will visit Master Lock, a company that he touted in his State of the Union Address.

Mr. Obama will then fly to Los Angeles for one fundraiser on Wednesday night and two more in the Golden State on Thursday.

On Friday, he will head to the Seattle, Washington area where he will visit a Boeing plant to give a speech on American manufacturing.

And there will be "campaign events" in the Seattle area as well on Friday.

As for the work of his top officials on Capitol Hill, all three who testified on Tuesday took their fair share of flak from Republicans, as they dissected the Obama budget on a number of fronts.

One area where there was no agreement was on the proposed one percent cut in military spending, as very few lamwakers endorsed the idea of two more rounds of military base closures as one way to save money in the Pentagon budget.

"I recognize how controversial this process is for members and their constituencies," said Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Two floors up in the building named for Sen. Everett Dirksen (R-IL), who has long been identified with the quote "a billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking real money," Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was deflecting tough questions from Republicans as well.

One prime issue for GOP Senators was the almost $2 trillion in new tax revenues that would be raised from those making more than $250,000/year for a family and $200,000 for an individual.

"These revenue increases are focused on the top 2 percent of the American taxpayers; not the remaining 98 percent," said Geithner, who argued that the tax increases would not slow down economic growth.

Talk like that is apostasy for many Republicans, who jabbed Geithner relentlessly, demanding to know why the Obama White House wasn't doing more to cut spending instead of raising taxes.

"We could save $100 billion a year eliminating duplication in the federal government," said Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).

"There's no proposals in this budget to actually do that," he complained to Geithner, who sidestepped a direct answer.

Meanwhile, in the hearing with the White House budget chief, Democrats pushed back against Republican complaints that President Obama was the biggest, baddest spender around.

"How much did President Reagan increase spending?" asked Sen. Kent Conrad (D-ND), as acting budget chief Jeffrey Zients just happened to have the answer of 69% on the tip of his tongue.

"What about President George W. Bush?" Conrad continued.

"89 percent," was the fast answer from Zients, as Democrats made the argument that Mr. Obama is a spending piker when compared with those two conservative scions.

Expect the answers and the questions to be much the same today, as this edition of Legislative Kabuki Theater continues in the halls of Congress.

Source: http://www.wsbradio.com/weblogs/jamie-dupree/2012/feb/14/selling-obama-budget/

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