The Spending Freeze is Worse than a Crime

As Tallyrand said of Napoleon's murder of Duc d’Enghien...

It was worse than a crime... it was a mistake

Defenders of the spending freeze proposal seem to have conceded up front that a real spending freeze would be a tragic disaster for America.

The defense of the indefensible is that it is a political stunt and the sums involved are trivial. That is the defense. That is the up-side... as good as it gets.

Let's look at that.

To say that the freeze doesn't actually cut much spending requires an interesting assumption... that Obama had/has no intention of actually doing anything substantive about the economy (still weak), housing (prices STILL declining) or unemployment (still horrible).

A freeze, no matter how fraudulent and loop-holed, means at the very least no increase.

This is not 1995. Clinton's challenge in 1995 was to assuage the wholly irrational fears and hatreds that put Republicans in control of Congress. That era was all about politics and perception. Both sides of the argument were kabuki for the center-right punditocracy.

Today Republicans threaten to make gains by default because even though nobody likes them the real world is totally fucked up. The voters' anger and despair is rational. Their children will clearly be less well off. Their jobs are gone for real. Their houses continue to be worth less for real.

The only great political ploy today is something that actually makes the economy better.

Is there any knowledgeable person who is willing to argue with a straight face that this stunt will actually help the economy?

That's a fair question.

It is not only policy malpractice, it is politically useless. The proposal will be met with blanket contempt by deficit-minded independents because the establishment is already assuring the base that it's a meaningless stunt!

So it is monstrous as policy (for what it precludes more than for what it accomplishes) and inept as politics.

Many of us could get behind some amoral bullshit that validates precisely the political arguments that threaten to keep this nation economically sick for a decade if it was going to accomplish some political miracle.

But since this will simply advance the proposition that Obama stands for nothing and will antagonize independents, in that way too-cute starkly transparent political bullshit does, it is worse than a crime. It's a mistake.

"We need to do it. I think it's important and I'll support it."

John McCain on GOOD MORNING AMERICA this morning

Maybe half of proposed freeze will pass, so it's a reduction of $8 billion a year or so. TARP was $700 billion, stimulus 800 billion, expansion of federal reserve balance sheet a trillion or so.

Newly proposed tax cuts - such as expansion of child care credits - will by themselves dwarf the 8 billion, for another example the right to deduct 2010 Haiti charitable contributions on 2009 tax returns, and such tax cuts are similar to spending hikes.

And then we may get more "emergency spending" such as Stimulus II by 2011, when the freeze would hit, and that would be spending not subject to a freeze.

It's silly to get worked up over a peanut item like 8 billion bucks.

Peddle real-change austerity to independents while dispensing people to internet sites to assure the left it's just a meaningless political stunt.

The argument for the freeze boils down to, "It's just a cynical lie, not any actual policy."

Nice.

+1 requires a shift for the plus sign.

"1" says it faster