“More” or “Less”? Is That a Trick Question?
20th February 2012
Read it. And watch the video.
On Tuesday, Jeff Sessions, ranking Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, asked acting OMB Director Jeffrey Zients a simple question: Does President Obama’s FY 2013 budget–the matter on which Mr. Zients had come to the Senate to testify–increase spending compared with current law (most recently, the debt ceiling compromise that was reached last summer). For some reason, Zients was utterly stumped. He was never able to come up with a coherent answer, let alone a straight one.
Today it happened again. Tim Geithner took his turn at the Budget Committee, and Sessions asked him the same thing. Geithner, like Zients, was confounded. The concepts of “more” and “less” seemed to be too much for him.
It is hard to know what to make of this arithmetic ineptitude on the part of the Obama administration. Is it possible that they don’t know the answer? No. The only explanation is that they know the answer, but prefer that the American people don’t find it out.