Could it be that no one is being held accountable because it may be Congress that is responsible for cutting the security budget for Embassies (and Congress rarely blames itself, especially the GOP House)?
No not really.....not since Politi-fact, Fact Check. Org, and Politico all validated that it stemmed back to Obama's budget. Which then noted that both Dems and Repubs voted to do so with Security. Then re-appropriated funds to make up any difference.
One -- which was noted by several fact-checkers in the aftermath of the debate -- is that Ryan, as the chairman of the House Budget Committee, put forward such severe cuts in his budget proposal that, running the numbers, embassy security funding would suffer a cut of $300 million.
The second was was to compare the relevant budget lines in the president’s proposed fiscal year 2012 budget to the amount passed by the House of Representatives last year.
We’ll look at both of these justifications, but first, let’s outline what Obama proposed for fiscal year 2012 (figures are rounded):
Worldwide Security Protection (ongoing operations): $1.45 billion
Worldwide Security Protection (overseas contingency operations): $247 million
Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance -- Worldwide Security Upgrades: $938 million
Total: $2.64 billion
Cuts in spending already passed by Congress
Using the second justification -- comparing Obama’s request to what the GOP-controlled House voted to spend for fiscal year 2012 -- has the advantage of not being speculative. Here’s the amount passed by the House for fiscal 2012 (figures also rounded):
Worldwide Security Protection (ongoing operations): $1.31 billion
Worldwide Security Protection (overseas contigency operations): $247 million
Embassy Security, Construction, and Maintenance -- Worldwide Security Upgrades: $755 million
Total: $2.31 billion
The difference between these two amounts is nearly $327 million -- a bit above the $300 million Biden cited.
Ultimately, a final bill with slightly higher amounts than the House’s initial bill -- about $60 million more -- was passed by both chambers and signed by the president.
But this approach has problems as well. For starters, Biden glosses over the fact that the president did ultimately sign the bill with the new lower funding amount, meaning he shares some responsibility for the lower level. (All presidential budget requests are opening offers that inevitably become subject to negotiation.)
The main problem with Biden’s claim, however, is that it’s not really what he was referring to in his claim from the debate. Biden said Ryan "cut embassy security in his budget by $300 million below what we asked for," but what passed the House wasn’t Ryan’s budget blueprint -- it was an actual spending bill that emerged from the House Appropriations Committee.....snip~
PolitiFact | Joe Biden says Paul Ryan cut embassy security by $300 million