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Obama to propose spending freeze

RightinNYC

RightinNYC

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Obama to propose spending freeze - Glenn Thrush and David Rogers - POLITICO.com

President Obama plans to announce a three-year freeze on discretionary, “non-security” spending in the lead-up to Wednesday's State of the Union address, 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 $250 billion, the Democrats said.

The freeze would not apply to defense or foreign aid or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.

News of the proposal came as the Congressional Budget Office is slated to release new deficit estimates Tuesday morning, and when the Senate will also vote on a proposed bipartisan task force empowered to force votes after November’s elections on proposals to rein in the growing federal debt.
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This is pretty surprising. Given the shifting national attitude, it looks to be that rare convergence of good policy, good timing, and good politics.
 
Isn't this that thing that John McCain suggested, which Obama then rolled his eyes at?
 
RightinNYC said:
Obama to propose spending freeze - Glenn Thrush and David Rogers - POLITICO.com



This is pretty surprising. Given the shifting national attitude, it looks to be that rare convergence of good policy, good timing, and good politics.
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Agreed. Now we'll see if he follows through. From the article

The freeze would not apply to defense or foreign aid or spending on intelligence, homeland security or veterans.
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That still leaves a HUGE amount of spending, but it's a start.

From the Article:

On Monday, Obama unveiled a series of five proposals intended to help middle-class families, including a near-doubling of the Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit for families making under $85,000 a year, creating a system of automatic workplace IRA contributions, and expanding help for families with elderly relatives.
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Okay so he's proposing cutting spending AND he's cutting taxes on the middle class. Now we're talking.
 
Seems like too little and it only starts in 2011.
 
Dav said:
Isn't this that thing that John McCain suggested, which Obama then rolled his eyes at?
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Yes:

“Well, look, I think that we do have a disagreement about an across-the-board spending freeze. It sounds good. It’s proposed periodically. It doesn’t happen.

And, in fact, an across-the-board spending freeze is a hatchet, and we do need a scalpel, because there are some programs that don’t work at all. There are some programs that are underfunded. And I want to make sure that we are focused on those programs that work.”

“I do want to just point out that autism, for example, or other special needs will require some additional funding, if we’re going to get serious in terms of research. That is something that every family that advocates on behalf of disabled children talk about.

And if we have an across-the-board spending freeze, we’re not going to be able to do it. That’s an example of, I think, the kind of use of the scalpel that we want to make sure that we’re funding some of those programs.”
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I'm hesitant to criticize people for things like this though, as I'd rather have someone recognize that they supported a bad policy and reverse course than to have them stick with the bad policy because they're worried about being labeled flip-floppers.
 
He plans on getting through his other policies (I believe cap and trade is next on the docket), cutting taxes, lowering the deficit and freezing spending? I'm sorry, but this seems to have as much substance as "Hope," and "Change."
 
Another take:

1) This isn’t news. In the budget proposal that President Obama submitted to Congress last year, his budget office already projected actual cuts and freezes in “non-defense” discretionary spending for the next three years. That’s in part because of the huge increase in that area of spending that the President requested (and received) for the current fiscal year. To be specific: FY2009 (President Bush’s last budget) had $589 billion in non-defense discretionary spending. That number jumped to $687 billion in FY2010 (Obama’s first budget), and then drops to $641 billion in FY2011, $622 billion in FY2012 and $625 billion in FY2013. So for the White House to now boast that it will freeze non-defense discretionary spending is hardly news. If anything, it’s backtracking on its earlier plans to actually cut that area of spending.
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Hm. That's somewhat less exciting.
 
Well this could be a good start. However, America isn't going to be able to get rid of it's horrendous debt levels unless it makes significant cuts to it's ridiculously large military. Just ain't gonna happen.
 
AgentM said:
Well this could be a good start. However, America isn't going to be able to get rid of it's horrendous debt levels unless it makes significant cuts to it's ridiculously large military. Just ain't gonna happen.
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You got that right. The GOP won't cut military spending and the Dems can't cut it because they'll be labeled as soft on defense or not supporting the troops. Or hell some other nonsense...
 
AgentM said:
Well this could be a good start. However, America isn't going to be able to get rid of it's horrendous debt levels unless it makes significant cuts to it's ridiculously large military. Just ain't gonna happen.
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Winnb said:
You got that right. The GOP won't cut military spending and the Dems can't cut it because they'll be labeled as soft on defense or not supporting the troops. Or hell some other nonsense...
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While I'm not denying that DoD could use some cuts, it's by no means a panacea.

Defense spending is 18.75% of the 2010 budget.

SS + Medicare + Medicaid + Welfare = 50.75% of the 2010 budget.

Cutting DoD while ignoring entitlement spending will do nothing to fix our situation in the long term.
 
RightinNYC said:
While I'm not denying that DoD could use some cuts, it's by no means a panacea.

Defense spending is 18.75% of the 2010 budget.

SS + Medicare + Medicaid + Welfare = 50.75% of the 2010 budget.

Cutting DoD while ignoring entitlement spending will do nothing to fix our situation in the long term.
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Well it will be difficult to cut spending in those areas, because the US' social programs are pitiful as they are.
 
AgentM said:
Well it will be difficult to cut spending in those areas, because the US' social programs are pitiful as they are.
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Considering how little you knew about the makeup of the federal budget, what makes you think you're on any more solid ground with this little nugget?
 
AgentM said:
Well it will be difficult to cut spending in those areas, because the US' social programs are pitiful as they are.
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-You said that we need to make cuts to our "ridiculously large military."
-I pointed out that the amount of money spent on entitlement programs and welfare is 2.7 times more than what is spent on the military.
-You say that we can't cut that spending, because those programs are "pitiful."

How exactly does that work?
 
Harshaw said:
Considering how little you knew about the makeup of the federal budget, what makes you think you're on any more solid ground with this little nugget?
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Seems like common sense? I still stand by my statement that the US military is ridiculously large.

Medicare is unlikely to be cut because seniors make up a significant chunk of the electorate. Welfare could be cut, but that could have unwanted social effects and could backfire. Some have suggested that Social Security be privatized, I suppose that's a possibility, not sure how advisable it is though.
 
AgentM said:
Seems like common sense? I still stand by my statement that the US military is ridiculously large.
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Doesn't matter what it "seems like." It's less than 20% of the budget, as has already been pointed out to you. We could eliminate the entire defense budget and we'd still run a trillion-dollar deficit this year.
 
Harshaw said:
Doesn't matter what it "seems like." It's less than 20% of the budget, as has already been pointed out to you. We could eliminate the entire defense budget and we'd still run a trillion-dollar deficit this year.
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Even at 18%, that's still a lot of spending. Admittedly it's not the biggest part of the budget, and I tip my hat to RightinNYC for that information. However, you could slash your military budget in half, and you'd still have the most military spending in the world probably.
 
AgentM said:
Even at 18%, that's still a lot of spending. Admittedly it's not the biggest part of the budget, and I tip my hat to RightinNYC for that information. However, you could slash your military budget in half, and you'd still have the most military spending in the world probably.
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OK, we slash the budget in half, and we still run a $1.3T deficit this year. Did you not read what I just posted?
 
Harshaw said:
OK, we slash the budget in half, and we still run a $1.3T deficit this year. Did you not read what I just posted?
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Yeah, well no one expects people to get rid of deficits over night, that doesn't happen. In the '90s Canada spent most of a decade getting rid of large deficits, it was a painful and not fun decade for all involved.

You'll have to make significant cuts in multiple areas of jurisdiction (I just don't know how you're gonna do it with your social programs), if you do that over time you'll be able to get rid of the deficits. But I don't see willingness in America to be fiscally conservative at the federal level. Except for this statement from Obama, which as I said, could be a good start...
 
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AgentM said:
However, you could slash your military budget in half, and you'd still have the most military spending in the world probably.
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Not as a percent of GDP.
 
AgentM said:
Seems like common sense? I still stand by my statement that the US military is ridiculously large.
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Nobody is disputing that. It's just not as large as our social spending.

Medicare is unlikely to be cut because seniors make up a significant chunk of the electorate.
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Cutting military spending is just as difficult as cutting Medicare spending. If we're talking practice, neither is going to be cut. If we're talking theory, both should be cut.

Welfare could be cut, but that could have unwanted social effects and could backfire.
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So could cutting spending on anything.

Some have suggested that Social Security be privatized, I suppose that's a possibility, not sure how advisable it is though.
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The SS privatization debate has nothing to do with the question of SS spending - it's entirely a matter of solvency of the program.

AgentM said:
Even at 18%, that's still a lot of spending. Admittedly it's not the biggest part of the budget, and I tip my hat to RightinNYC for that information. However, you could slash your military budget in half, and you'd still have the most military spending in the world probably.
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And much of that slack would have to be picked up by other western nations such as yours. For the past 60 years, the US military has served as a subsidy to most of the rest of the world.
 
AgentM said:
Yeah, well no one expects people to get rid of deficits over night, that doesn't happen. In the '90s Canada spent most of a decade getting rid of large deficits, it was a painful and not fun decade for all involved.
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Now you're changing the subject.

Your premise is that our military budget is what's driving our debt.

I just showed you that eliminating the military budget entirely still leaves us with a trillion-dollar deficit.

Thus, it's not military spending causing the vast majority of our debt.

And no, getting rid of the deficits and paying down the debt will not be pleasant. But it sure would be nice if our current "leadership" wasn't hell-bent on making the problem exponentially worse.
 
RightinNYC said:
And much of that slack would have to be picked up by other western nations such as yours. For the past 60 years, the US military has served as a subsidy to most of the rest of the world.
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What slack? Canada doesn't go out and make enemies the way the US does. We don't have imperial ambitions like you do. Most of the time we leave people alone, and they leave us alone.

If any country poses a serious invasion threat to Canada, it's the US, and frankly there's no way our military could stop you from invading us if you really wanted to. You'd just have to fend off the insurgency later, and deal with the international consequences. :mrgreen:
 
Harshaw said:
Now you're changing the subject.

Your premise is that our military budget is what's driving our debt.

I just showed you that eliminating the military budget entirely still leaves us with a trillion-dollar deficit.
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Alright alright, you win. I capitulate! Uncle!

And no, getting rid of the deficits and paying down the debt will not be pleasant. But it sure would be nice if our current "leadership" wasn't hell-bent on making the problem exponentially worse.
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I agree, but I didn't see much better from the last admin. either really, Obama's really been following Bush's policies in a lot of areas.
 
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