Obama, Invoking Clinton, Says Romney Budget Doesn't Add Up

MELBOURNE, Fla. — President Obama, picking up where former President Bill Clinton left off, said Sunday that the budget proposals offered by Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan do not add up.

The president was quick to jump on appearances by his Republican rivals on the Sunday morning talk shows, in which they were asked separately what loopholes they would close to pay for their proposed tax cuts. Neither of the men answered the question.

The relationship between Mr. Obama and Mr. Clinton started off rocky — Mr. Obama, after all, ran against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination in 2008. But after Mr. Clinton’s ringing endorsement of Mr. Obama in a well-received Democratic convention speech on Wednesday, the president mentioned his Democratic predecessor at every stop on a bus tour of Florida over the weekend.

“President Clinton told us the single thing missing from my opponents’ proposal was arithmetic,” Mr. Obama told a rally here, to a burst of applause.

“When my opponents were asked about it today,” Mr. Obama said, “it was like 2 plus 1 equals 5.”

On NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Mr. Romney did not answer several questions from the host, David Gregory, on which tax deductions he would seek to eliminate, saying only that he would target “some of the loopholes and deductions at the high end” while lowering the “burden on middle-income people.”

On the ABC News program “This Week,” Mr. Ryan said that “the best way to do this is to show the framework, show the outlines of these plans, and then to work with Congress.”

Mr. Clinton, at the Democratic National Convention, said the Romney-Ryan plan did not  add up. Since then, Mr. Obama has adopted that line on the stump, and he has reiterated it in almost all of his public remarks.

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: September 9, 2012

An earlier version of this post said incorrectly that former President Bill Clinton addressed the Democratic convention on Thursday. His speech was Wednesday.

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Democratic Plan to Cut $3 Trillion Doesn't Mention Defense (The Atlantic Wire)

Earlier today, Democrats leaked a $3 trillion deficit-reduction package to the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Dow Jones and Reuters but in each case, one major government expense was not mentioned: defense spending. The outline of the plan, independently reported by each outlet, calls for savings though "cuts to federal entitlement programs and Medicare coupled with at least $1 trillion in new taxes." It's not clear why the Pentagon, which is on the hook for a $600 billion haircut if a deal between Democrats and Republicans isn't reached, is left out of the Democratic proposal. (Thus far, reports say the bulk of the savings will come from about $400 billion in Medicare savings and revenues from tax increases.) What is clear, however, is the aggressiveness in which military contractors are lobbying members of the Super Committee. Last week, K Street firms filed lobbying reports for the third quarter requiring them to list details such as who they represent and if they're specifically lobbying the Super Committee or "Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction," as it's officially called. The filing doesn't breakdown lobbyists by industry but we found a number of corporations that have significant defense contracts among the list of registered lobbyist clients:

Related: Debt Deal Could Slash Hundreds of Billions From Pentagon Budget

Northrop Grumman Corporation: $50,000General Dynamics: $50,000ITT Corporation: $480,000Honeywell International: $10,000Associated General Contractors of America: $130,000Accenture: $40,000IBM: $1,090,000INTELSAT: $10,000Now, it's highly unlikely that the Democrats would propose a deficit plan without any defense cuts. (The conventional wisdom in Washington is that defense cuts will be around $100 billion if a deal can be brokered.) But central to any rumored outlines has been at least a rough number of where defense cuts will come from. Today's plan gives us none. Liberals such as The Nation's George Zornick are already complaining that the Democrats' deal is a "major capitulation" that cuts too much from Medicare. But if defense cuts aren't a major factor in this $3 trillion grand bargain, that would likely produce leftward angst as well.

Related: Obama Administration Message on 9/11: It's 'Not Just About Us'

*Did we miss any defense contractors in our buletted list? View the entire list of registered third quarter lobbyists below, courtesy the Sunlight Foundation:

Related: Pentagon Looking Safe from the Super Committee's Cuts

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