Carney Grilled On Sequester Cuts, Can't Defend Claims About Teachers
Q The Education Secretary was here yesterday. He said some things that didn’t prove to be true about the immediacy of pink slips for teachers. He mentioned a specific school district in West Virginia. They’re not sequester-related at all. He made some sort of mild -- suggested that they might not be. They’re clearly not. How confident are you, Jay, and confident is this administration that the things it’s saying and the portrait it is presenting to the country is not only accurate but will stand the scrutiny of time once these cuts begin?
MR. CARNEY: Well, we’re very confident --
Q Because it’s not the first time that there was a note of exaggeration or factual inaccuracy.
MR. CARNEY: Oh, really? Because if you want to provide other examples, I’d take them.
Q The FAA can’t explain definitively there will be 90-minute delays. That’s another example.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I don’t know that the Secretary of Transportation was giving you an absolute minute target for how much the delays will be. If there are going to be delays as a result of reduction in man-hours and personnel among our air traffic controllers, that’s a fact. And I hope you keep that in mind when you’re on your next commercial flight and you’re delayed, if that does in fact come into effect with the sequester.
I would refer you to the Department of Education and to the superintendent of schools in the district that you mentioned for specifics about that. I’m certainly not familiar with it. I can tell you that the impacts of sequester are real, and to diminish them --
Q But you're familiar with that example -- it’s wrong. That was wrong.
MR. CARNEY: Well, I’m unfamiliar of the example. I would refer you to the Department of Education and to the superintendent of the school district for more information about it. I don’t have it. What I can tell you is that --
Q Jay, it came from your podium, right? You guys said that. You guys made the statement.
Q It was in this room, and --
MR. CARNEY: I’m just saying I don’t have any -- I am not personally in contact with individual school districts --
Q So you’re asserting something and you’re asking us to check with a local school affiliate on whether or not --
MR. CARNEY: No, no, Hans. Let me rewind the tape where I said I would refer you to the Department of Education, which is here in Washington, D.C., not a local school district, for more information.
Q You also referred us to the district.
MR. CARNEY: Well, obviously, the school district is a good place to go for information about the school district.
Q But they said the information said at that podium was false, it was wrong. So I’m asking you to acknowledge that.
MR. CARNEY: Jon, I don’t have any more for you in it. I welcome -- I encourage you to make phone calls in the old-fashioned reporting sense to find out more if you like. I don’t have anything more for you on it.
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