President Barack Obama probably won’t send his fiscal 2014 budget to Congress until sometime in March, according to a defense official with knowledge of the budget process.

The delay of the president’s spending blueprint, which the law says is supposed to be delivered to lawmakers Monday, drew immediate criticism from Republicans, who have been battling Obama over tax and spending issues.

“For the fourth time in five years this White House has proven it does not take trillion-dollar deficits seriously enough to submit a budget on time,” House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, said in a statement. “It’s long past time for the president to do his job.”

The defense official asked for anonymity because the administration hasn’t officially announced when the budget would be ready. White House press secretary Jay Carney declined to comment on the date, telling reporters traveling with the president to an event in Minnesota, “I don’t have an update on the president’s budget.”

The administration has been signaling that the annual spending plan wouldn’t meet the deadline because of the protracted debate over taxes, spending and the deficit. Acting White House budget director Jeffrey Zients wrote in a letter to U.S. Representative Paul Ryan last month that because a deal wasn’t reached until Jan. 1, the administration was “forced to delay some of its FY2014 budget preparations, which in turn will delay the budget’s submission to Congress.” 

(Bloomberg)