[Update] Bob Woodward claims "A 'Very Senior' White House Person Warned Me I'd 'Regret' What I'm Doing"
Washington Post’s Bob Woodward says Obama's choice not to deploy an aircraft carrier because of budget cuts is “a kind of madness.”
[WATCH]
More at Politico.
Recently Woordward publicly castigated Barack Obama for lying about the origins of the sequester law, showing that it was a White House proposal, signed off on by Obama before presented to Congress.
The president and Lew had this wrong. My extensive reporting for my book “The Price of Politics” shows that the automatic spending cuts were initiated by the White House and were the brainchild of Lew and White House congressional relations chief Rob Nabors — probably the foremost experts on budget issues in the senior ranks of the federal government.
Obama personally approved of the plan for Lew and Nabors to propose the sequester to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). They did so at 2:30 p.m. July 27, 2011, according to interviews with two senior White House aides who were directly involved.
Nabors has told others that they checked with the president before going to see Reid. A mandatory sequester was the only action-forcing mechanism they could devise. Nabors has said, “We didn’t actually think it would be that hard to convince them” — Reid and the Republicans — to adopt the sequester. “It really was the only thing we had. There was not a lot of other options left on the table.”
Conservative pundits have been pleasantly surprised that Woodward has been front and center in pointing out Obama's lies.