The president’s people are floating a new idea for tonight’s State of the Union Address – a freeze on elements of the discretionary non-discretionary spending that makes up nearly a third of government outlays.*
While willing to suspend my disbelief, to me it seems like the move is almost purely political theater:
The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time.
Whether or not this can actually be implemented is one question: The president proposes, but Congress disposes. Whether or not he actually means to try and implement it will be what’s really worth watching – this could just be one of those “I feel your pain” SOTU throwaways that never quite makes it into policy.
Still, the howls on the left are predictable. Former Enron adviser and economist Paul Krugman is up in arms, calling the proposal “appalling at every level.” And Bob Hebert is starting to wonder – as so many of us did more than a year ago, “who exactly is this guy?”
It’s a tough situation: The president’s tabula rasa candidacy had certain advantages – anyone could write in what they liked, and the his stump rhetoric, although inspiring to many, didn’t really have a very great deal of actionable there, there. But fundamentally, governing means making choices, and each choice comes at a cost. Oxen are routinely gored.
Many predicted that our president could never satisfy all the aspirations of those who supported him, since their own motivations were so disparate. But the chattering classes share quite a number of unexamined certainties. When they turn on him – and it may be starting now – it won’t be pretty.
Update: Corrected to note that the spending freeze is not on so-called mandatory spending, the two-thirds share of the federal budget which is mushrooming uncontrollably, but rather on elements within the much smaller one-third of discretionary funding. Which, since the freeze excludes military spending is purely symbolic.
Thanks to occasional reader William for his clarification.
What it means is that they can no longer spin away the results in Massachusetts.
Their first attempt, which was to deny that it was a referendum on ObamaCare, fell flat because while that may not have been the specific case with actual Massachusetts voters, it was most certainly the case with the out-of-state people that contributed more than $5,000,000 to Brown’s campaign.
While this is a nakedly transparent tactical move that is preordained to fail, it is a tacit admission that the gestating Tea Party has gained enormous traction. Obama is afraid, and he has every right to be.
The thing is, Obama proposing a spending freeze is akin to Obama proposing to close the barn door: the horse is no longer available for comment.
Well I applaud the recognition that we just can’t keep on keeping on but as far as inspiring leadership goes its about par for the course.
There’s nothing about Obama that speaks to “Stay the course” and, while ‘We the People’ may not be the most steadfast of entities, yet we do tend to know what we want and where we’re going. Obama doesn’t get that about the American people, or doesn’t care (my vote), and, as such, is NEVER going to be able to lead this unruly herd of cats.
We can be manipulated through a variety of short term crises, IMO, but over the longer term we
likedemand stability and calm. Obama can never provide that, as it is counter-culture to his existence. Exposure to Marxism and radicalism at a young age can do that to a person.PS to the update: which discretionary spending would include the demise of another Carrier Strike
GropeGroup?Has it not occurred to anyone that the very concept of “budgets”–which imply a bounded limit on spending, are totally incompatible with the concept of “entitlements”–which essentially means that you have to provide, (i.e. spend$) services for whomever shows up at the door to make a claim–a number which in any given year is unknowable. The two concepts are mutually exclusive in theory and in fact–totally. (Now I realize that projections can be made based on past experience, etc., but still, this essentially unresolvable conundrum is the main reason we have constant budget “supplementals” every year–and continuing expanding deficits.)
How tough is it to understand that someone who votes “present” the great majority of the time, brief as it was, that he was in the Illinois State Senate, has no center? Beyond that, how difficult is it to questions why someone who accepts the accolades of being “the smartest President ever” won’t let anyone see his school records, and not even his birth certificate, for that matter. Blank slate? How about ‘in-your-face-cipher’?
People who have nothing to hide don’t usually hide so much as this President has and does. It’s been obvious since the outset that this guy was far less qualified or capable than advertised, unless the non-seeing parties were willingly blind. And, after all, the bulk of the willingly blind are the ‘party of race politics’, i.e. the Dem party, and they were determined (actually scared to death that they would not) to beat the “racist party” to the goal of electing the first black person as president so as to justify their self-serving claims and self-identification as being ‘progressive’ and all that. I may have been cynical all along, but I’m pretty sure that I was and am right in this.
Lex – don’t mean to nitpick but the SOTU is scheduled for Wednesday night, January 27.
And that’s so we can all watch ‘Lost’. Right?
Well we can all watch “the lost” come Wednesday. But the intramural game of watching the DEMs tear themselves to pieces is kinda fun; if only there wasn’t so much that needed to be done with so few grownups around to attempt to do so.
…or threaten to shoot anyone who turns on the TV in MY house.
Mongo, thanks for reminding me to leave the TV unplugged on the 27th.
Lex must be thinking of Gov. Doyles State of the State address, here in Wisconsin, that IS tonight.
In fact, SteveC, the man set a RECORD for voting ‘present’ in the Illinois Senate. I wonder how many times Sen.-elect Brown did that?
When is he slated to be seated, anyway? Exactly how long does the Senate and the Administration intend to thwart the will of the public?
Tentatively set for Feb 11th.
Lex, If I were grading your paper here, you’d get points taken off for not using the approved style guide. It’s:
Former Enron adviser and “economist” Paul Krugman…
For Mongo, another analogy. There is a reason hunter’s don’t take the decoy up into the tree stand with them. You want the attention of the quarry away from the killer’s hide. Pure, straight up subterfuge. Distraction, while waiting for a quartering away broadside shot. Based on pure gall alone, this might top bombing aspirin factories and terrorist training camps with for rent signs out front. Sad thing is though, that the day before the BIG speech, this ate up alot of newsprint. Total bullshit.
I’ll be over at Ace of Spades Headquarters for the SOTU speech. Moron-blogging (and commenting!) seems the right reaction to what’s likely to be said. I wonder if my pocketbook and my liver will be able to stand the effects of participating in the drinking games which’ll be proposed at that site.
In general, across-the-board freezes are not a good idea..my experience in the business world is that people do this only when they are too wimpy to require larger cuts from some organizations/programs than from others.
Speaking of cuts, it sounds like they’re finally killing the LORAN system. Anyone have any opinions on the advisability or otherwise of this?
The DearLeader INCREASED spending $40 Billion just after coming into office in ’09, following that up with INCREASES for Fiscal Year ’10 of $100 Billion. That’s a net INCREASE of $140 B!
Now he’s telling us he’ll do us all a GIANT favor by reducing this increase by $15 Billion, yielding a NET INCREASE of $125 Billion in discretionary spending in just one year! All of this, and he still has more than $500 Billion in TARP money that he could use to pay against the debt, but has so far refused to do.
If he’s so worried, all of a sudden, about the deficit, why not get truly serious and use a “hatchet, scalpel, skil-saw and a chain saw” to the budget. What he’s proposing is absolutely meaningless.
Oh yes… how about showing all of the negotiations of where we’re cutting on, wait for it… on C-SPAN!
Mr. suave detective, this is a prime example of Obama’s new definition of a “Good Deal,” i.e., “First we give ya a bad deal, then cancel it, and call THAT a good deal.”
Well, that is it exactly Mr. Gunn. Having increased spending by something like 24% in the past year alone, he is now going to “freeze” spending at the current level.
This is no more than theatrical gamesmanship.
Isn’t the president, ANY president, pretty much irrelevant in how much money is spent in our names? Congress appropriates money, right? A president’s budget is only a guideline, regularly ignored even by Congressfolk in his own party.
Congress, led by both parties over the years, has failed to propose or pass a balanced budget. The same Congress, led by both parties, regularly raises what it laughingly calls the national debt “ceiling.”
Wouldn’t you love it if just ONCE, they’d grow some stones and say “Sorry, no more spending, we’re about to reach the “ceiling.”