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. [...] But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, 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 would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time. – The New York Times
Obama and his team have out dicked Dick Morris.
So, it seems the moment of David Plouffe’s arrival produced a reaction concoction something akin to what can only be called neo-Hooverism. After New Jersey and Virginia, but especially Massachusetts, Mr. Obama and his merry band of political hacks came up with a solution that will do nothing good for the economy in the long-run, evidently not having the attention span for that, while giving Blue Dog Democrats a big wet one, which will leave the American people with an incurable migraine. A spending freeze for three years on non-discretionary items, minus all things national security. Because once the people get that Obama has tackled the deficit, they’ll reward him in 2012, even if we lose the House and the Senate in 2010. Though just maybe the people will see how bipartisan Obama is, how serious Obama is, because he will buck his own, which is a major point of this whole exercise, so the voters will automatically reward him by not throwing out all those conservative Democrats he’s trying to protect at all cost.
But if you want to know what reaction Obama wanted most, read Marc Ambinder, who at least gives several interpretations, saving himself from embarrassment for including this one:
The big if — IF the president really fights for this…fights against his own party, and does so with conviction — if Democrats decide to embrace this (which is doubtful), then it could help both his party and himself.
That’s the the storyline the Obama White House wants yelled across the land. It’s the height of political cynicism, but there will always be people who fall for it, which is Obama’s bet.
So, we can all put to rest any sincerity the nonsense Mr. Obama said to Diane Sawyer about being only a one-term president, which was simply the wind up for the State of the Union pitch on Wednesday. Obama playing the role of principled politician who is willing to serve up himself for the greater good.
Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Pres. Obama goes beyond not being able to lead to prove he’s perfectly happy caving to craven polling to solve a situation he caused himself, gaming that the reaction will be that he’s so impressed the people that they’ll say, “See, look, he hears us, he really hears us.”
Meanwhile, the Republicans will be tied in knots trying to attack this one, saying he’s built up such a huge budget that it’s all smoke and mirrors. The Daily Call’s review exactly what the White House wanted: The news also signals the president may be moving towards the center on issues such as climate change and health care… Others on the right are raving about Obama’s deficit, obviously not sure how to tackle the spending freeze.
Brad Delong cries “Dingbat Kabuki.” But there’s a lot at stake well beyond Barack Obama’s incompetency, though Mr. Obama can’t see beyond his own reflection.
As another deficit-hawk points out, it is hard to imagine a less competent legislative operation: it would be one thing to offer a short-term discretionary spending freeze (or long-run entitlement caps) in return for fifteen Republican senators signing on to revenue enhancement triggers. It’s quite another to negotiate against yourself by attacking employment in the short term. The fact that the unemployment rate is projected to remain stable over the next year means that there is a 30% chance it will go down, a 40% chance it will stay about the same, and a 30% chance that it will go up–and whatever it turns out to do, the administration’s budget has just given it an extra 0.5% bump upwards. – Brad Delong
And people doubted when Obama invoked Ronald Reagan that he meant it. I’d say I told you so yet again, but it’s getting redundant at this point. It’s now a given.
Obama is obviously working on not only leaving the next president, but everyone else, a worse inheritance than he was handed. Mission accomplished.
Video via Huffington Post.
Basically, we have a Republican President.
I’m having difficulty sleeping.
But, he was bought and paid for.
And it makes me sick.
Lock, stock & Barrel.
And I’m sicker.
Ramsgate says:
26 January 2010 at 12:11 am
Bingo. But at least you know what you’re getting with them, with all those young people and others who joined Obama’s band completely suckered.
Yes, it is really bloody awful. What a disaster. A calamity really.
I just cannot envision how he can change this and turn things around. He is who he is.
He could turn out to be one of the most ineffective Presidents the country ever had, and in the end even more despised and disliked than GWB, because he squandered so much promise and potential.
This is exciting! Too bad it isn’t a movie. And I actually thought the man was smart.
Folks:
Sadly its worse than this -
When Big O and his merry band of Corporatists realize that nobody is taking this nonsense seriously they will double down and use the deficit commission to attack Social Security and Medicare. The Republicans are playing this beautifully. They have been trying to destroy Social Security and Medicare for years now they have Democratic President and Congress that will do it for them. You can bet they won’t overplay their hand – they will just sit back and let Obama and the Blue Dog, DLCers, and New Dems do it for them.
By-the-by, the fact that they have yanked David Plouffe back into the game just shows that they are clueless about what’s happening around them. They think they have a marketing problem when the real issue is that they believe in nothing except power and the American people see them as a bunch of insular soulless idiots who are corrupt to their core.
Bravo, Taylor. You called it. A friend who was a confirmed Obababot e-mailed me this evening asking for t-shirt sizes for my son and me; she plans to order us all “I voted for change and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” She had been watching Rachel Maddow.
if yall havent seen tonight’s charlie rose u should. much fo it u know from reading this site but some good quips too. one panelist said obama is spock but what we need right now is kirk- ie obama is too cerebral unpassionate. one panelist said the wh doesnt know who to be afraid of most to piss off so it appears they will piss everyone off. i know many folks who keep complaining to me about the deficit and obama needs to act. i keep saying – are u sure u want that cuz he wont raise taxes etc he will cut programs for the poor etc. i know many who email the wh daily freakin over the deficit. now tonight im getting emails of fury of these same people freakin he will now make cuts to their programs! im going to have to learn to drink more burbon for sure in the days ahead.
Two Davids Magic Tailor Shop
Obama: Please make me a suit so that people will love me again
Tailors: Yes we will make you a suit so fine that people will see their own reflection shining miraculously back at them.
People of Massachusetts: (After Deval Patrick & Obama year one)
The President has NO CLOTHES!!!!!!!!!
Ramsgate says:
26 January 2010 at 12:11 am
Basically, we have a Republican President.
——
Newsflash: The Republicans don’t want him.
Obama is such a LOSER. This is ridiculous. It’s a complete bald-faced political lie. First of all, he can’t do it; second of all, he campaigned AGAINST it; third of all, even MSNBC [Obama TV] is mocking it and calling it “WashingtonSpeak.”
LOSER! Callow, calculating, and contrived. Utterly pathetic. Desperate to give himself cover for his SOTU speech. LOSER.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/01/26/obama_campaigned_against_spending_freeze.html
It is not the executive branch of government, but the Congress that determines spending.
Obama caves-in the the right….again. This is classic Bill Clinton/ Dick Morris triangulation. As Rachel Maddow said last night it’s “insane.” Right wing crazy people like Evan Bayh might think that it’s a good idea, but they are, after all, right wing crazy people. To exclude the defense budget in his freeze proves that this is nothing more than political sop thrown to the Blue Dogs and conservatives in the Democratic Party. It’s a shameful act of political pandering meant to quiet the neocon warmongers on his right. I sure wish Obama would stop listenenig to the Clinton-Morris faction. Peace
Evan Thomas of Newsweek:
Obama “Not fundamentally honest.”
Understatement of the year….
Izvestia says these cuts are all to set up the play to loot Social Security. Since that’s what the financial class supported Brand Obama to do, this should not surprise anyone. — Lambert Strether
http://www.correntewire.com/good_news_about_spending_freeze_its_preparation_gutting_social_security_and_medicare
Krugman is pissed off:
January 26, 2010, 9:01 AM
Obama Liquidates Himself
A spending freeze? That’s the brilliant response of the Obama team to their first serious political setback?
It’s appalling on every level.
It’s bad economics, depressing demand when the economy is still suffering from mass unemployment. Jonathan Zasloff writes that Obama seems to have decided to fire Tim Geithner and replace him with “the rotting corpse of Andrew Mellon” (Mellon was Herbert Hoover’s Treasury Secretary, who according to Hoover told him to “liquidate the workers, liquidate the farmers, purge the rottenness”.)
It’s bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead.
And it’s a betrayal of everything Obama’s supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, “I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.”
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/obama-liquidates-himself/
Get Ready for the Double-Dip “Recession” [it's really a Depression]
From RobertReich.org:
President Obama today offered a set of proposals for helping America’s troubled middle class. All are sensible and worthwhile. But none will bring jobs back. And Americans could be forgiven for wondering how the President plans to enact any of these ideas anyway, when he can no longer muster 60 votes in the Senate.
The bigger news is Obama is planning a three-year budget freeze on a big chunk of discretionary spending. Wall Street is delighted. But it means Main Street is in worse trouble than ever.
A pending freeze will make it even harder to get jobs back because government is the last spender around. Consumers have pulled back, investors won’t do much until they know consumers are out there, and exports are miniscule.
Nate Silver: White Houses Brain Freeze
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/01/white-houses-brain-freeze.html
http://www.businessinsider.com/obamas-spending-freeze-will-torpedo-the-push-for-a-jobs-bill-infrastructure-and-expanded-healthcare-2010-1
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2010/01/25/newsweeks_evan_thomas_obama_not_fundamentally_honest.html
Link to the Evan Thomas “fundamentally dishonest” = video is damning – ant watch King defend poor Obama – Washington made him do it.
At this risk of repeating myself…
This guy is clueless and has no idea what he’s doing. It is fundamentally frightening to think about another 3 years of this. God help us all.
I am serious when I said in the past and am saying now, he should resign and hand over the reins to Biden. We need someone who is serious about fixing problems and Obama IS NOT THE ONE.
Sorry – At the risk….
I wonder if all those folks who fled this site rather than abide criticisms of Obama have found another political site that is supportive of “the One.? I am so pissed at what the failure to hold this man accountable for anything during the campaign has wrought.
No, it’s not just that “their guy won” – it is that the whole damn country is losing spectacularly – except for the wealthy that is. The ones who helped put him there.
Bob Herbert
“Who is Barack Obama?
Americans are still looking for the answer, and if they don’t get it soon — or if they don’t like the answer — the president’s current political problems will look like a walk in the park.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/26/opinion/26herbert.html?hp
oxfdblue says it better then anyone I’ve read so far. I’ve been lurking here for way over a year and you all disgust me.
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/1/25/830272/-This-place-has-lost-its-mind
Toots-
The deficit is 1.35 trillion dollars. There was a 10% increase in spending for departments now being proposed to be frozen. Is the freeze going back to old funding or new?
You can be disgusted all you want. The fact is this guy doesn’t know what he is doing. It’s all smoke and mirrors. When McCain proposed a spending freeze in 2008 Obama was all over it.
There is no end to the lying and hyprocrisy with this Administration. That is what my problem is with them.
Toots
What is it that disgusts you? That we would expect the Democratic President to act on Democratic Party principles? That we would expect the self-described “the one we’ve been waiting for” to be competent? That we’d expect that the Democratic Administration would have had a clue about what was happening in MA? That we’d expect him to govern in the general direction of protecting Main Street – not just Wall Street?
Go on and be disgusted – the rest of us will continue actual work politically to get this country back on track.
Thanks djjl.
Additionally, Toots, instead of just lurking for over a year – why don’t you post something substantive when you see a post here with which you find disagreement.
No reason to just drop by and drop a “disgust” bomb – correct us when we are wrong or you just disagree on something.
BBL. Gotta go make my health care deposit for the good health of for profit health care.
And toots, some here find the contempt the Administration shows towards the American people reprehensible. I use the word contempt because how stupid do they think we are? Can’t think for ourselves? Can’t see through the p.r. spins and empty words? Can’t see that this Administration has no idea what to do with the economy other than spout incorrect ecomonic theories?
BTW – we are headed for a depression and if anyone doubts it good luck to you.
The Obama Administration has lost it – their whole world view has collapsed and since they don’t believe in anything they are willing to try anything to keep their heads above water.
This budget freeze is a joke and the deficit commission will destroy Social Security, Medicare, and the Democratic Party.
Its over and they just don’t know it -
Toots says:
26 January 2010 at 10:46 am
Unlike many, I have no problem with REAL economic policy that actually addresses our fiscal problems, including the deficit.
Unlike you, Toots, and that well meaning but clueless diarist over at DK, who is joined by the Obama Amen Choir, what I actually object to is Barack Obama’s sheer, unadulterated INCOMPETENCE.
Of course you’d be “disgusted,” because readers and I actually hold politicians accountable, not caring that it’s one of our own party who’s fumbling all over himself in public.
The Audacity of What?
djjl says:
26 January 2010 at 10:31 am
djjl – I haven’t fled the site. I read TM every day and all the comments. I just haven’t had anything substantive to add because I am absolutely disgusted with where this administration is going. They’ve totally allowed health care reform to be botched. It’s probably one of the worst pieces of legislation ever to be written in my 70+ years on this earth and I don’t even want to see them try to pass it in any shape or form. It’s a terrible joke–on the American people. My one concern now is what they are doing to the middle class. If you do consider yourselves to be middle class, you are being squeezed to the point of no return. I have always contended that those who actually control this country do not want a strong growing middle class because there is power in the middle class when they fight back–something we seem to have forgotten. We will be a country governed by the corporate masters with the rest of the populace paying the bills and being squeezed until we’re working for peanuts.
I kept repeating during the primaries that if it was hope that I was looking for I would go to church and I often wondered what Obama was planning on changing other than diapers. His mantra of “hope and change” was an illusion and a lot of people were not only suckered but still believe that somehow he’s going to pull this all together. I wish them well but Main Street is going to get crap while Wall Street cleans up. And as far as raiding social security, they’ve been doing that for at least the past 40 years. Where the hell does everyone think the money has gone? They’ve used social security like it was their damned cookie jar.
Am I disgusted? Nauseatingly so. I’ve never seen such a bunch of incompetents. But I guess that’s what you get when the person you’ve supported has no ideology and lacks a belief system in what the party he belongs to represents.
Hey Jane! So good to hear from you.It appears the ultimate coup has happened right muder our noses. We thought it was close when the Supremes gave the election to Bush but I guess that was a warm up.Now our party has been hijacked by a Republican! We felt like we were being hijacked during the primary and we were!
LL – I just haven’t had the heart to post comments because I see things in such a different light and believe that I’m paranoid. I really don’t comprehend anymore because this country is not the country I once knew and God knows the Democrats are not the Democrats I long ago knew. Was there corruption back then? Of course, but at least the people did better under the Dems or there was the illusion that we did. It’s not about making life good for everyone anymore. It’s become something ugly, selfish and corrupt.
How’s Sammy?
INCOMPETENCE
Wow, that’s a word a year ago I thought would never be justly laid at the doors of the Obama Administration but that’s the picture that is emerging -
After years of calling the Bush Admin incompetent here we are with somewhat the same thing in a Democratic flavor. Wow, the rules are changing and neither the Dem or Republican Elites can handle it -
For many different reason Big O just blew the whole Health Care Reform bill out their ass and now the rest of the house cards is falling down all around them. The Republicans are on a feeding frenzy and they can’t help themselves. They are vicious by nature and when they smell blood watch out!
I’m wondering where are the Corporations? Aren’t they going to step in to rescue Big O and Associates to at least a`maintain an illusion of a functional government?
Jane Austen
You would NEVER be one who I would think left!
It is so good to hear from you.
They don’t need to rescue them. The Obama Administration is very effectively turning everything into power for the powerful.
Sammy is growing like a weed and his babbling is tuening into words,he is at a delightful age..17 months. Thanks for asking. How are your little ones?
I guess Toots just decided to Tootle off instead of responding.
The diary posted by Toots makes a very effective argument about Obama’s game playing and the poster doesn’t even see it.
Lake Lady says:
26 January 2010 at 1:45 pm
Growing like weeds and fresh as all get out. One is planning on taking over the world now that she is 3 and the other, 16 months, is Edmond Hillary the second scaling everything he can get his little feet and hands on.
A good deal of the blame here is on us [well not so much me:)] because at times we are just talking out of our asses. Take the budget for example. What was the total budget for 2010? How much was spent on defense? Should Social Security and Medicare be treated the same as Discretionary Spending is in the budget? How much Interest was paid out of the budget? To whom? And so on. Peace
Greetings from ND!! Just got our electricity back on, but we don’t have water yet. We’re hoping the pipes won’t burst.
Trying to catch up on the news – TM.com is always my first stop. I can’t post as much as I’d like because we still have dial-up and by the time I post something, there’s several new threads.
I find that djjl, Lake Lady, kris, Ramsgate and a few others seem to think like along the lines that I do, so I can’t really add to their insight. I just appreciate Taylor telling it like it is and the comments that help me think about the issues.
I can’t say I’m surprised about Obama. Whenever I talk myself away from my gut feelings, it always comes back to my gut feeling being right on. Just words – that’s all Obama is, and only to help himself. The aloofness is real and he does NOT connect with real people. I’ve read some comments in local papers that there is some remorse for backing Obama. One comment in particular talked about Hillary at the Grand Forks Alerus Center and how she talked about solutions. I just connected with Hillary and still admire her and think she is doing a terrific job as SOS. I don’t know if I can bring myself to listen to Obama tomorrow night.
So good to hear from you Velvet! Good luck with the weather.
I’ll listen to him if for no other reason to find out if any of this stuff was just trial balloons being lofted to see how it might fly.
Yes, I’ll probably listen for the same reason and I want my hubby’s reaction to it. It will be a pain as I’m back to barely able to listen to him – never did like his style for some reason.
Hey Velvet~ I hope you stayed warm with no electricity! We have lucked out in that department this year.
We were huddled around the gas range in the kitchen. It was amazing how quickly the rest of the house got cold. Our little doggies stayed close and cuddled with us. I was remembering all the books I’d read of the early settlers and here we were living it. It makes you look at your situation and be grateful for what you HAVE, not what you don’t. There are still several hundred people without power as thousands of power lines and poles had snapped. I am so looking forward to going to work and having a normal day!! I am so grateful I have a job and I feel for those who don’t. My son is one. It also makes me wonder how many people can continue to pay for propane or any kind of heat when their hours are cut or they lose their job. Taylor is so right – the people are getting screwed.