Rep. Bob Latta's statement on failure of President Obama to meet budget deadline

Press Release:

Latta Statement on President’s Failure to Meet Budget Deadline

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congressman Bob Latta (R-Bowling) issued the following statement after President Obama failed to submit a budget request today for Fiscal Year 2013. By law, presidents have to submit their budgets no later than the first Monday in February. The White House budget is expected on February 13.

“With trillion-dollar budget deficits, it behooves the President to submit a budget on time. This marks the third time in four years that President Obama has missed his deadline to submit a budget to Congress on time. One of the President’s fundamental duties is to present a budget to Congress, and doing so on time will then give both the House and Senate ample time to pass a budget.”

The House Budget Committee has compiled a chronological review of Presidential budget submissions dating back to 1923. Several key points from the data:

In just one term, President Obama has missed the budget deadline more than any other President.

* In the 90 years covering FY1923 through FY 2013, President Obama is the only President to miss the deadline two years in a row. He is the only President who has missed the deadline in three of the four years of a term.

* All Presidents from Harding through Reagan’s first term met the statutory budget submission deadline in every year. In five of these years, a change in the law was requested and passed to extend the deadline, and the President always met it.

* Since the budget process moved the date of submission to the first Monday in February, the incoming President’s first budget submission has been delayed for practical reasons (the President’s inauguration is less than three weeks before the budget submission’s deadline). Yet President Obama’s first budget in his first year set a new record with a 98-day delay for his FY2010 budget.

* Since the statutory deadline was extended to the first Monday in February, with the exception of the first budget for a new President, this deadline has only been missed three times: Clinton FY1998; Obama FY2012; and Obama FY 2013.

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