Jeffrey Zients, the Office of Management and Budget’s acting director, surprised lawmakers by engaging in a partisan attack after Republican members of HASC demanded to know exactly how the Obama administration plans to stave off nearly $500 billion in mandatory defense cuts known as sequestration.

The cuts are scheduled to kick in on January 2, barring a last minute budget compromise in Congress.

“What is holding us up right now is the Republican refusal to have the top two percent [of earners] pay their fair share,” Zients said in response to a question from Rep. Randy Forbes (R., Va.).

“The root cause problem here is the Republican refusal to ask the top two percent to pay their fair share,” he reiterated, much to the surprise of several committee members who slammed Zients for turning a practical hearing aimed at preventing catastrophic defense cuts into a partisan blame game.

Zients’ partisan remarks appeared to shock Rep. Mike Turner (R., Ohio), who chastised the Obama administration for showing a lack of seriousness about a series of cuts that will shrink America’s military and imperil the country’s national security.

“We’re not usually in the habit of hearing such partisan comments in what is really a bipartisan committee,” Turner said. “We don’t usually hear people throw around ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat,’ but you have, very, very well. I want to commend you on your broken record of partisanship.”

“Zients’ comments are pretty brazen in light of the $800 billion in wasted taxpayer dollars that was supposed to (but didn’t) stimulate the economy and which were, in effect, paid for by $800 billion in defense cuts,” said Gary Schmitt, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “And is he really suggesting the country’s national security be put at risk because the administration want to raise taxes (on more than the top 2 percent) in order to save PBS, Amtrak, and the Education Department?”

While Congress is responsible for finding nearly $1.2 trillion in budget cuts in order to avoid the sequester, lawmakers chastised Zients and the Obama administration for failing to push Congressional Democrats into a reasonable bargaining position.

“The president has the full responsibility for sequestration, having endorsed it and then signed it himself,” Turner said. “You have no plan.”

“It is stunning that the White House is willing to hold our men and women in uniform hostage to their desire to raise taxes,” said Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative. “Congressional Republicans have laid out a specific plan for fixing current law to avoid this impending nightmare scenario. The White House has not offered any specific proposals and seems only interested in playing politics with America’s national security.”

Lawmakers also challenged Zients on a recent Department of Labor (DOL) memo that may have instructed defense contractors to break a law known as the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act.

The Monday memo suggested government contractors delay issuing more than 10,000 pink slips to employees, a move that could leave them vulnerable to expensive labor lawsuits under the WARN Act. That law requires companies to notify their employees at least 60 days in advance (or 90 days in some states) that their jobs may be cut during periods of mass layoffs.

DOL maintains that the act is not applicable because sequestration is not a certainty—a viewpoint that led critics to accuse the administration of election year posturing.

Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, HASC’s chairman, recounted the worries of leading defense industry officials, most of whom do not want to leave their companies vulnerable to costly lawsuits.

“This is the law of the land and we have an obligation to” ignore the administration’s advice and follow the law, McKeon recounted the industry leaders as saying.

“They all believe that layoffs are reasonably foreseeable and the WARN Act applies, so why do you disagree with them?” McKeon asked Zients.

“Clearly, the companies you just talked about need to absorb this guidance from the DOL, which is very clear,” Zients said, failing to acknowledge industry concerns.

Rep. Turner also chastised DOL’s advisory on the WARN Act.

“The statement by the DOL that people need not give WARN notices has no effect,” he said. “It’s not worth the paper it’s printed on. It might be the desire of the administration” to avoid massive layoffs in the run-up to the election, “but it’s a fiction.”

Zients went on to explain that if the sequester becomes reality the administration will be prepared to carry out painful defense cuts.

“We will be ready at DOD and across the government if unfortunately Congress doesn’t do its job,” he said. “There is more than enough time for us to be ready for the unfortunate possibility of January 2 coming to be. We will be ready.”

Others in attendance at the hearing avoided the partisan skirmish by focusing on the potentially disastrous result of the looming sequester.

Military families and veterans, for instance, would see their medical benefits slashed in certain instances, according to Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, who testified beside Zients.

“We could be forced to cut back on base support services, facility maintenance, and maintenance of government owned family housing,” Carter said. “Commissary hours might have to be reduced [and] funds for the Defense Health Program, which provides health care for retirees and military dependents, would be sequestered, resulting in delays in payments to service providers and, potentially, some denial of service.”

Massive cuts would additionally scale back the military to what Carter and others have described as unsafe levels.

In a worst case scenario, sequestration would shrink the U.S. Army from 560,000 troops to fewer than 490,000; the Marines from 202,000 to fewer than 182,000; the Navy from 325,000 to fewer than 322,000; and the Air Force from 333,000 to fewer than 330,000, according to statistics provided by the Reserve Officers Association (ROA).

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) sent a letter to Office of Management and Budget acting director Jeffrey Zients on Friday urging him to revise for the record “factually incorrect” statements he made in testimony earlier this week.

“I want to give you an opportunity to correct your statement for the record,” Sessions wrote. “Your response will affect how your performance, and that of the president, will be judged by the American people.”

At Tuesday’s hearing, Sessions became frustrated with Zients’ refusal to answer a simple question about the president’s latest budget.

“Do you propose to spend more money over the next 10 years than what the Budget Control Act and current law would cause us to spend?” Sessions asked Zients on Tuesday.

Zients repeatedly evaded the question, responding with a series of vague statements such as: “I think what we have is a much more honest baseline,” eventually suggesting that the president’s budget spends less than projected by law.

Obama’s fiscal year 2013 budget requests $46.959 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, making it the most expensive White House proposal in United States history.

That figure is more than the most recent projection from the Congressional Budget Office ($44.251 trillion), more than is called for in the Budget Control Act ($45.552 trillion), and more than Obama’s fiscal year 2012 budget ($45.952 trillion).

Session went so far as to challenge Zients to resign his post if his comments proved inaccurate.

“Let me ask you this. If you are incorrect in saying that you do not increase spending more than the current law would you consider resigning your current office?” Sessions asked.

Zients did not directly answer the question, but said he was “confident” that the president’s budget would reduce the federal deficit by “more than $4 trillion” over 10 years.

That figure, and the litany of accounting gimmicks used to achieve it, has been roundly rejected by commentators of all political persuasions.

Liberal Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote that president’s budget “begins with a broken promise, adds some phony policy assumptions, throws in a few rosy forecasts and omits all kinds of painful decisions.”

The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the plan “would barely stabilize the debt—and at too high a level.”

Sessions called it “one of the most spectacular fiscal cover-ups in American history.”

Take away the gimmicks included in the president’s budget, and the true deficit reduction figure becomes as low $273 billion over 10 years, primarily achieved by raising $1.9 trillion in new taxes over that same period.

Sessions’ letter is intended to give Zients a chance to ameliorate what the senator called “a continuing and deliberate obfuscation by the White House.”

“Fairness and responsible management of the people’s money demands an honest answer to my simple question,” he wrote. “To properly address our fiscal crisis, can’t the president’s team honestly answer how their budget impacts the spending and debt course we are on?”

GARRETT: If I make under $250,000, and I do not buy health insurance as I’m required to under the Affordable Health Care Act, is that a tax on me or is that not a tax on me?

ZIENTS: Well, this is–

GARRETT:  A moment ago you said there’s no tax increase.

ZIENTS: There aren’t.

GARRETT: So that’s not a tax?

ZIENTS: No.

GARRETT: That’s not a tax, okay. I just wanted to be clear on that because that’s not the argument that the administration is making.

In the lawsuit before the Supreme Court, the Obama administration is defending the health care mandate by calling it a tax.

Following the release of President Obama’s budget request for fiscal year 2013, the most expensive in United States history, Office of Management and Budget director Jeffrey Zients refused to say whether the president’s budget would increase federal spending over the next decade.

“Do you propose to spend more money over the next 10 years than what the Budget Control Act and current law would cause us to spend?” asked Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) during a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday.

The Budget Control Act (BCA), legislation arising from the debt-ceiling compromise last August, capped total spending over the next 10 years at $47.053 trillion.

However, after incorporating the superficial “savings” included in the president’s budget—such as the re-appropriation of war funding that would never have been spent ($848 billion), fully accounting for Medicare reimbursements that are not paid for ($429 billion), and the resulting reduction in interest payments on the debt ($224 billion)—the figure becomes $45.552 trillion.

Obama requested $46.959 trillion in federal spending over the next decade, an increase of $1.4 trillion compared to the BCA. Compared to last month’s estimate from the Congressional Budget Office—$44.251 trillion—the president’s budget calls for a $2.7 trillion spending increase.

But Zients could not answer the question.

“I think what we have is a much more honest baseline,” he said.

When Sessions pointed out that the net effect of the president’s plan was to increase spending above current law, meaning the BCA, Zients objected.

“I want to be crystal clear here,” he said. “We are complying by the BCA, there will be $2 trillion of deficit reduction from the BCA.”

However, the president’s budget is relatively murky in its treatment of the BCA, taking credit for $1 trillion in savings that have already been signed into law, and therefore should not be counted as such. The budget also removes the $1.2 trillion sequestration—automatic spending cuts put in place following the failure of the so-called “super-committee” to agree to a deal—and replaces it with a tax increase of equal size.

A visibly irritated Sessions toughened his line of questioning:

SESSIONS: Well let me ask you this. If you are incorrect in saying that you do not increase spending more than the current law would you consider resigning your current office?

ZIENTS: Let me go back to the balanced approach

SESSIONS: We looked at the numbers. Are you that confident?

ZIENTS: I’m confident that with our baseline, which accurately reflects current policy and business, as usual that we have deficit reduction of more than $4 trillion. And we do it in a balanced way. For every $2.50 of spending cuts there’s a dollar of revenue. That’s a good balanced approach.

SESSIONS: Mr. Zients, there are no spending cuts in this budget. This budget increases spending. Surely you know that. It increases taxes. So to say you cut $2.50 in spending for every dollar in tax increase is beyond the pale.

Once all of the budget gimmicks and superficial savings in the president’s budget are accounted for, critics say, the true amount of deficit reduction is not $4 trillion over the next decade but closer to $300 billion.

Stephen Miller, Sessions’ communication director, reacted with astonishment at the exchange.

“In one of the most revealing—and stunning—moments of the 2012 budget debates, President Obama’s budget chief was at first either unable or unwilling to answer a very fundamental question from Sen. Sessions over whether the President’s budget increased or decreased spending relative to the levels agreed to under the Budget Control Act,” he said. “Ultimately, he did provide an answer—only it was wrong. What reason would the White House have for not simply telling the American people that their budget plan increase total spending above those levels set in August?”