Obama delays budget for 2013

President Obama will release his 2013 budget one week late, an administration official said Monday, the third time the administration has missed the legal deadline. 

Under the law, the budget is to be released on the first Monday in February, but the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) will be releasing the 2013 budget on Feb. 13.

The Obama administration also delayed the release of the budget last year, waiting until Feb. 14.

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the delay is symptomatic of a fiscally reckless administration.

{mosads}”I am deeply disappointed in this President’s abdication of leadership when it comes to prioritizing Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. The decision to delay the release of his budget again could not come at a more precarious moment for our fiscal and economic future,” Ryan said. 

“This will mark the third time in four years the President has missed his statutory requirement to present a budget on time, while trillion-dollar budget deficits continue to mount. As the President announces another missed deadline, tomorrow marks the 1,000th day Senate Democrats have gone without any budget at all.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member on the Senate Budget Committee, blasted the delay and said he was “shocked” to hear the administration would again fail to deliver a budget on time. 

“In this, the final year of his term, one would think he would be ready and eager to lay out his detailed plan for our nation’s financial future.”

Two defense officials confirmed to The Hill that despite the delay, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will still unveil some details of the Pentagon budget on Thursday, as planned.

The release of the president’s budget is the first step in the spending cycle for the federal government. Obama is expected to call for $1.2 trillion in automatic discretionary spending cuts, which were triggered by the failure of the congressional deficit supercommittee, to be replaced with other mandatory program cuts and tax increases. The proposals will be grounded in September recommendations the president made to the supercommittee.

The president will propose an increase in federal civilian workers’ pay as part of the budget, an administration official confirmed this month.

The 0.5 percent pay increase comes after two years during which civilian pay was frozen to save billions. The 2013 pay increase is far less than the current rate of inflation, which stood at 3.4 percent in November compared to a year earlier.

The official said that in order to cuts costs, the administration will not be releasing print copies of the huge, four-volume budget to the news media for free.

— Jeremy Herb contributed.

This story was updated at 4:06 p.m.