Timing is everything: Obama's budget same day as NH primary

Typically, the budget is released on a Monday, but White House press secretary Josh Earnest says Tuesday's release allowed hard-working administration employees and journalists a chance to watch the Super Bowl.

The 2017 budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1 will combine proposals for new spending on infrastructure, education and combating opioid abuse with tax increases on corporations and wealthy individuals to keep deficits down.

Other proposals may have more of a shot, including $1 billion over two years to combat heroin and opioid addictions, additional funding to feed low-income children during the summer, when most lose access to free and reduced-price lunches, and additional money for the administration's "moonshot" effort to cure cancer.

[...] House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared Obama's $10 per barrel of oil tax dead on arrival.

Obama's budget is so dead that the Republican chairmen of House and Senate Budget committees issued a statement declaring they wouldn't even bother to hold the requisite day-after hearing to allow White House Budget Office chief Shaun Donovan to go through the motions of defending it.

"Nothing in the president's prior budgets ... has shown that the Obama administration has any real interest in actually solving our fiscal challenges," chided House Budget Chair Tom Price, R-Ga.