Weekly Recap: Budget Crunch‏

Hi there,

Happy Saturday! Here's our quick recap of last week's events:
1) President Obama glossed over nearly $17 trillion in debt. In an interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, the president claimed that "“We don’t have an immediate crisis in terms of debt. In fact, for the next ten years, it’s gonna be in a sustainable place;" his remarks put him firmly out of touch with both the facts as presented by the nonpartisan CBO and with the prevailing opinion of the American people.
2) The president's budget is now historically late. For the first time in 92 years, Congress lead the way on the budget process instead of the White House. The last time that happened, no American student had ever been subjected to reading The Great Gatsby - because it hadn't been written yet.
3) Begun, the budget wars have. The House and Senate both released their budget plans this week. Despite previous expressions of concern over entitlement reform, the White House backed the Senate plan, while the GOP touted their plan's promise to balance the budget in 10 years. All in all, the 10-year spending outlook for each was similar - the House plan would spend $41 trillion, while the Senate would spend $46 trillion.
4) Meanwhile, the Senate passes another continuing resolution. The Senate picked up the House's CR (H.R. 933), managing to keep the government running for another 6 months. The problem? In the process, it seems like they managed to pack in all kinds of wasteful spending.
5) A disenfranchised Leprechaun took over Washington Could Learn A Lot's social media outlets. It seems a particularly bad piece of legislation has the wee folk up in arms, with one Leprechaun going so far as to commandeer our sister organization's Facebook and Twitter feeds to express his outrage.