White House Misses Yet Another Deadline

Uncertainty and missed deadlines are not new characteristics for this Administration.

They’re at it again. In clear defiance of the law, the Administration has failed to provide details on the looming spending cuts associated with the sequester, set to take effect on January 2, 2013. The Sequestration Transparency Act required that the White House send details to Congress by last Friday. True to form, the Administration took this legally-mandated deadline as merely a suggestion.

Previous AAF research has pointed out that the Administration missed more than half of its own deadlines on regulations that they created themselves in the health care law. This utter disregard for the law is striking, but also indicates poor leadership and it certainly doesn’t help strengthen the integrity of the office.

Granted, the sequester is terrible policy, and it was never supposed to become law. But for now, it is. And providing guidance for it is also the law. 

If the Administration believes the sequester should not be implemented then it needs to work with Congress to replace the cuts, something the House of Representatives has already done. But in the meantime, their report to Congress is overdue.

While they’re at it, perhaps the White House could provide some leadership on dealing with the remaining aspects of the fiscal cliff in a serious, substantive way.