This Q&A comes from yesterday’s press briefing. It’s rather long, and so very depressing, but very telling.
ABC’S JAKE TAPPER: The President is going to sign a bill, the spending bill, which contains $8 billion in earmarks. Democrats in the Senate are now calling for the President to, if not make an effort to have it stripped in the Senate, to veto the bill. […] I don’t fully understand this argument that this is — we’re moving forward. This bill hasn’t even come to the President’s desk yet. If you guys are really serious, why not take the bull by the horns and get this stuff out of the omnibus spending bill?
MR. GIBBS: Well, let me try again, what we’ve talked about before. This is the culmination of the legislative business from the previous fiscal year and the previous Congress. […] That’s why he hasn’t asked for any [earmarks] in the past few years. (ED. NOTE: Really, Robert?) The President believes that we can work with Congress to reduce wasteful spending in the future.
TAPPER: Why not now?
MR. GIBBS: Well, we are —
TAPPER: This isn’t a legislation — I guess — you make it sound as if the legislation is written and it’s just waiting for him to sign, and it’s not. It’s being worked on right now on Capitol Hill. It’s in the progress of being assembled. So it’s not that he comes to office and this is outstanding business.
MR. GIBBS: Well — well, it is outstanding business in the sense that typically appropriations bills are done before half the fiscal year is over.
TAPPER: Right, but it’s not too late to, like, tell Harry Reid, if you send this to me with this $8 billion —
MR. GIBBS: I think as I said before, Jake, that the President will lay out some very clear objectives on how we move forward. There will be, over the course of the next several years, dozens and dozens of appropriations bills that cross his desk. And we’ll change the rules going forward, understanding that we have to deal with last year’s business.
Bad news, America, your new President is a liar.
And your cynicism is getting larrrrger.
