A leaked email has the budget office telling an administrator to manage his budget in such a way that it does not contradict official claims about the impact of sequestration:

A leaked email from an Agriculture Department field officer adds fuel to claims President Obama’s political strategy is to make the billions in recent federal budget cuts as painful as possible to win the public opinion battle against Republicans. The email, circulated around Capitol Hill, was sent Monday by Charles Brown, a director at the agency’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service office in Raleigh, N.C. He appears to tell his regional team about a response to his recent question on the amount of latitude he has in making cuts. According to the partially redacted email, the response came from the Agriculture Department’s budget office and in part states: “However you manage that reduction, you need to make sure you are not contradicting what we said the impact would be.”

And since we said the impact would be bad, you need to manage the budget to make sure the impact is bad.

Even if you have to lie. Which, they are lying. How are they lying? Here are a couple of examples:

Lie No. 1: Janitors got a pay cut. First, remember when Obama claimed janitors were getting a pay cut? There are new lies on that front. Glenn Kessler starts out by reminding us:

At a news conference last Friday, President Obama claimed that, “starting tomorrow,” the “folks cleaning the floors at the Capitol” had “just got a pay cut” because of the automatic federal spending cuts known as the sequester.

That story got four Pinocchios. But that was just the beginning. It was reported that janitors were having overtime cut, and the White House clung to that thin reed. Jay Carney said: “On the issue of the janitors, if you work for an hourly wage and you earn overtime, and you depend on that overtime to make ends meet, it is simply a fact that a reduction in overtime is a reduction in your pay.”

The thin reed just broke. Kessler reports today that janitors get almost overtime: “[O]vertime amounts to only [a] pittance of the overall pay — about $6.50 a week on top of wages of $1,000 a week. That’s much different from Carney’s claim of having to ‘depend on that overtime to make ends meet.’” Four more Pinocchios for that one.

Lie No. 2: We Must Cut White House Tours. This one starts to fall apart upon examination. It turns out the White House Visitors’ Office employs a staff of seven. And tours are self-guided. Meanwhile, the federal government is still hiring. And the White House pays a calligrapher — a calligrapher! — $96,725 a year. The Weekly Standard says: “In all, the White House appears to employ 3 calligraphers for a yearly total of $277,050.”

Clearly, the idea that tours need to be cut is a bunch of horse droppings. I like Louie Gohmert’s idea: until the tours resume, no money to take the President to or from a golf course. Ha.

Let’s do some Army of Davids stuff. What examples can you find of the White House lying about the sequester?