Obama: "Dead wrong, or deeply cynical" (Joan Walsh/Salon)

Dead wrong, or deeply cynical
Either Obama is dooming the economy to placate deficit hawks, or he's pretending to freeze non-defense spending Video

Shhhhh!

Don't tell Republicans about Monday night's Rachel Maddow Show, where progressive economist Jared Bernstein, who works for Vice President Joe Biden, reassured Maddow that the controversial "spending freeze" the Obama administration just leaked wouldn't apply to many important social programs, at all. (You can watch it below.)

Maddow made the same point Robert Reich and Andrew Leonard did on Salon: Imposing a spending freeze during economic hard times is felony stupid. It's Roosevelt in '37. Bernstein quickly reassured Maddow she'd gotten her facts wrong: The administration will cut some programs, Bernstein said, but they'll increase funding for others. The freeze wouldn't apply to health care programs, the already passed stimulus, and certainly not to the package of middle class assistance programs Obama and Biden released the same day, Bernstein insisted.


But wasn't just the Maddow show; apparently Obama advisors briefed the liberal blogosphere to reassure folks that this freeze won't hurt at all. As Marc Ambinder explains:

"The freeze is irrelevant to health care because Medicare, Medicaid and taxes are all mandatory. So too are many of the programs for the neediest, such as unemployment insurance and Pell Grants. And many of the other programs were plussed up recently so the White House is freezing them at a very high level. A second stimulus package wouldn't be included either."


So who do they think they're fooling? If they're telling the truth, and dozens of social programs will be exempt from the freeze, or even increased -- hey, we can even pass a second stimulus! -- then why is Obama selling what he's doing as a freeze? To win Republican support? Not gonna happen. To make Evan Bayh happy? (The freeze is exactly what Bayh recommended to Bloomberg's Al Hunt on Friday.) Who cares?

And do they think all Republicans are stupid and/or completely cut off from the liberal blogosphere, so they won't learn that this is just a pretend freeze, that will let Democrats grow social spending for their priorities? Bernstein said it would let Obama cut "wasteful spending" and thwart the lobbyists who defend every imaginable government program. Really? If everyone knows the freeze isn't real, and it's just about proving your program is important to the recovery or health care or some other protected priority, it will be a lobbyists' free for all anyway.

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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joan_walsh/index.html

This is nothing but a play for "moderate" voters who claim to be worried about the deficit.

I don't think this "freeze" will really effect anything so I don't care, but it is a little disappointing that the President feels reduced to doing stuff like this.

On the other hand, while it may be tiny amounts of money we are talking about when compared to the overall budget, perhaps Obama is signaling that he plans to veto bills that land on his desk which are entirely bloated with pet projects from both Democrats and Republicans.

Overall, this is probably pretty meaningless.