Politico: Obama will announce a temporary multiyear freeze on discretionary, non-defense spending

President Obama plans to announce a temporary multi-year freeze on discretionary, non-defense spending in the lead-up Wednesday's State of the Union address, two Hill Democratic sources familiar with the plan tell POLITICO.

The move, intended to blunt the populist backlash against Obama's $787 billion stimulus and an era of trillion-dollar deficits -- and to quell Democratic anxiety over last Tuesday's Massachusetts Senate election -- is projected to save tens of billions, the Democrats said.

The proposal is in line with a plan floated by Sen. Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), a fiscal hawk, who told Bloomberg's Al Hunt last week that there was a “fighting chance” Obama would propose a freeze in most discretionary spending by the federal government as part of his address.

“The president can say in this State of the Union address, ‘I’m going to include in my budget a freeze on discretionary spending, I’m drawing a line in the sand, and I’m going to use my veto pen to enforce that,’” Bayh said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s Political Capital with Al Hunt.

The move would likely be welcomed by Blue Dog Democrats and deficit hawks, but party liberals would likely bridle at baselining a wide array of popular domestic spending programs.

The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.

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In his budget for Fiscal Year 2011, to be presented on Monday, February 1, President Obama will propose a three-year hard freeze on non-security discretionary spending, to last from 2011 through 2013.

This will save $250 billion over the next decade, senior administration officials told reporters. By 2015, non-security discretionary spending will be at its lowest level as a component of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product in 50 years.

The announcement will come at a time when the White House and Democrats are trying to deal with voters angry about a dysfunctional Washington, DC, with many concerned about the deficit and out-of-control government spending. The president and his team have said for months that he would address deficits in his State of the Union address, knowing that the massive spending in the Wall Street bailout and stimulus package would make many Americans uneasy, but the upset victory of Sen.-elect Scott Brown, R-Mass., underscored that concern.

Senior administration officials acknowledged that various government officials were already protesting the potential cuts and freezes in their budgets and favored projects, but wouldn’t go into detail.

“Tune in Monday” to see who protests after the budget is released, an official joked.

The base level of non-security discretionary spending for Fiscal Year 2010 is $477 billion. From 2011 through 2013, a senior administration official said, spending “will be no higher than that.”

The administration is defining security-related discretionary spending – which will not be impacted by this freeze – as spending related to the Pentagon, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, the Department of Homeland Security, and spending related to international affairs.

“We are at war and we’re going to make sure our troops are funded at an adequate level,” a senior administration official said.

This category – roughly one-seventh of the overall budget, or about 1/3rd of total discretionary spending -- is generally what people think about when they say they want Washington, DC, to rein in spending, a senior administration official said. They don’t mean Medicare, Social Security, or defense spending, the official said.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kim-mance/mccains-spending-freeze-w_b_135859.html

With all the horrible decisions coming out of the McCain/Palin campaign, it's almost like shooting fish in a barrel (or wolves from a helicopter) to point out more failure.

But we shouldn't let McCain get a free-ride on his proposed government spending freeze. If for some fluke of a reason (2000 election, anyone?) McCain wins this thing, his proposed freeze will send us back into the Dark Ages.

During the first debate, McCain's off-the-cuff answer about fixing the ailing economy:
"How about a spending freeze on everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs."


Some would think after a hot-headed, ill-advised statement like that, the presidential hopeful would try and distance himself -- pretend it never happened.
But instead, he fought back against Barack Obama's previous description of his vast spending freeze, in the final presidential debate saying:
"OK, what -- what would I cut? I would have, first of all, across-the-board spending freeze, OK? Some people say that's a hatchet. That's a hatchet, and then I would get out a scalpel, OK?"

No Senator McCain -- a government spending freeze of "everything but defense, veteran affairs and entitlement programs" is not OK.

On the soaring federal deficit, which polls show is a major factor in voters' discontent, Obama will announce on Wednesday that the budget blueprint he files next week will contain a "hard freeze" on discretionary spending that lasts through 2013, an effort his advisors liken to the fiscal discipline average families impose on themselves every day.

WASHINGTON — 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.

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, from air traffic control and farm subsidies to education, nutrition and national parks.

But it would exempt the Pentagon, foreign aid, Veterans Administration and homeland security budgets, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years is less than 5 percent of the $9 trillion to $10 trillion in additional debt the government is expected to accumulate over that time.