Getting Serious About Spending ( more )

25Jan10
Washington is full of shopaholics.

Politician's plans are always bigger than their means. Liberals want to throw money at unions and wage a war on poverty, and Conservatives want to throw money at business and wage a war on terror. But government, like the spendthrift college student, has no resources of its own. It spends all its time running up the bill for someone else.

Voter anger over government spending and the deficit is at a fever pitch. Tomorrow evening during the state of the union address, President Obama will call for freeze on spending.

Barack Obama talks fiscal discipline with the same level of credibility that Jeffrey Dahmer would have had discussing the merits of Veganism.

The three-year freeze would lock discretionary spending at its current levels beginning in 2011, and only allow for increases at the same rate as inflation after that.

Of course, there’s a catch.

The spending freeze doesn’t cover entitlement programs. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security; the largest and fastest growing portion of the federal budget, will remain uncontrolled and unfunded liabilities.

The proposal could cut as much as $15 billion from the 2011 budget, but finish the year with a budget deficit estimated at $1.35 trillion. White house officials claim as much as $250 billion in savings over 10 years, less than 3 percent of the $9 trillion in additional deficits that will accumulate over the same period.

All this comes just a week after the surprise election of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, who campaigned to voters concerns on Democrat’s handling of the budget and the economy. With the federal budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion dollars three years running, many economists say the deficit and the national debt have reached levels that will impair the nation’s economic growth for generations to come.

Democrats are engaging in pointless election year posturing in the face of grassroots sentiment, and an uncertain mid-term election outlook. So Mr. Obama has gone back to full blown campaign mode to regain lost support. Once the election cycle has passed? It’s back on the Marx train.

"I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," Obama told ABC news.

I have news for you sir, the stuff you’ve been pushing? You aren’t going to be either.