Balance of Power

That’s pretty much the same theme Office of Management and Budget director Peter Orszag hammered home in a conference call with reporters this morning. Both the House and Senate budget blueprints honor Obama’s four budget principles, he said, and they’re “98 percent the same as the budget proposal the President sent up in February.”

Yes, Orszag said, they don’t make Obama’s middle-class tax cuts permanent or allow for a “cap and trade” program to limit carbon emissions. But the stimulus bill already funds those tax cuts for two years, he said, so “we have two years to figure this out.” And the energy committees don’t need the budget blueprint to legislate a cap and trade program, he said.

As for health care, Orszag said, the fact that the budget blueprints don’t have a specific funding figure for an overhaul doesn’t matter, because the committees that write it would have to make it pay for itself anyway.

None of this is going to erase the headlines that Obama is getting his budget cut back. But clearly, the White House has decided it’s better to pretend everything is fine than to throw darts at the budget committee chairmen in public.