Spending Growth Freeze is a Handful of Beans

Democratic US President Barack Obama continues in his quest to be a "a really good one-term president (as judged by liberal progressives that only make up 20% of the US population) rather than a mediocre two-term president (as judged by voters after evaluating him after 4 years)," as he told ABC's "World News" anchor Diane Sawyer in an exclusive interview recently. His newest effort in his quest to be a one-term President is that he will announce that he wants a three-year freeze on discretionary, non-security spending.

Now, this is not a bad thing, and Republicans should support him in this. About $447 billion of US government spending is 'discretionary, non-security funding'- the rest is mandated by law (the entitlements) or related to defense, intelligence, veterans or national security issues. Obama is promising to veto any budget that Congress submits to him that spends over that threshold, not adjusted for inflation, over the next three years. All of this is good, and a step in the right direction, and Republicans should support him with this effort.

But, this effort is laughable for many reasons. Obama has already greatly expanded the amount of 'discretionary, non-security funding' in his first year, and all that money is still sloshing around finding its ways to corrupt individuals and buying votes while contributing to the massive debts that is driving our nation into bankruptcy. Freezing it now, after its massive expansion, isn't that much of an effort by Obama.

And it isn't like he is 'really' freezing spending- he is freezing the mind-numbing growth in spending after his wild orgy of spending first year. Spending on 'discretionary, non-security' spending will continue at a rapid and high clip of $447 billion a year, a staggering amount already by any real measure. Oh, and it is not a 'hard' spending cap- inflationary increases of 3% a year or whatever inflation is is apparently not going to count towards the 'freeze'. 3% a year of 447 is $13 billion, over 3 years, means that the 'freeze' will only grow this portion of the budget $40 billion over the next 3 years. One has to wonder how much he was intending to grow 'discretionary, non-security' spending while running massive deficits a year before this freeze.

Oh, and this freeze, which is expected to save a couple hundred billion from the budget, would not even make a dent in controlling spending if the President manages to ram through a trillion dollar healthcare bill that no one wants. It is wrong to characterize someone as 'fighting debt' or 'spending money wisely' when on one hand they want to 'freeze' spending growth and on the other hand they want to push through a massive bloated spending increase.

To be perfectly honest, you have to wonder if this is yet another promise that Obama intends on breaking. During his campaign for President, he ridiculed his opponent, the moderate Republican John McCain, for calling for a spending freeze, which is the very thing that he is calling for now. One wonders what has changed, other than his poll numbers or experience in office, to reverse his position.