Obama: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

This is rich.

Here’s Barack Obama at today’s press conference:

They tell me, you need to fund our Defense Department at such-and-such a level, you need to send out Social  Security checks, you need to make sure that you are paying to care for our  veterans. They lay all this out for me, and — because they have the spending  power. And so I am required by law to go ahead and pay these bills.

Oh, so the law matters? Obama might want to send a memo to his own budget director:

The White House has informed House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan  (R-Wis.) that it will miss the legal deadline for sending a budget to  Congress.

Acting Budget Director Jeff Zients told Ryan (R-Wis.) in a letter late Friday that the budget will not be delivered by Feb. 4, as required by  law.

Look, this is very simple.

The White House should either make sure to follow all of the laws, or it should admit that it only does so when it is in its own interest/politically useful. Obama can’t just use the law as political leverage when his own administration fails to comply with it in other areas.