Obama's Spending Freeze

From yesterday's New York Times:

"President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday."

Is anyone else as unimpressed by this as I am? Brad Delong, Paul Krugman, and Mark Thoma to name a few. The "spending freeze" will stop growth of government discretionary spending through 2013, and will only allow for growth proportional to inflation after that. We're talking about $250 billion in savings over 10 years, compare that with the $9 trillion dollars or so the deficit is forecast to rise during that time and. . . I'm unimpressed. Administration officials contend that the spending freeze on the smaller, discretionary part of the budget will have symbolic value. In other words, the spending freeze is more of a political ploy to gain populist support than anything else.

But I feel the administration is misreading what the public is looking for. They don't want a political ploy disguised under the sheath of budget responsibility. They want some real action. They want unemployment numbers to come down. They're looking for a revival in the job markets. A spending freeze is the exact opposite of what needs to be done to lower unemployment. It shows a growing disconnect between the White House and the American public. I've been a strong Obama supporter for a while, but his wavering stance on health care, and now this, has got me rethinking the situation.

One more note on this issue... If the administration really wanted to do something about the budget deficit, they might want to think about real health care reform...

"It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population." -NY Times

That is all.