January 27, 2010--The Timidity of Hope

While waiting for tonight’s State of the Union address, I am prepared to make one prediction—it will not sound all that different than those by George W. Bush.

What a difference an election in Massachusetts can make.

From what has been leaked to the media about the speech, its title could be The Timidity of Hope.

The centerpiece will be a call to freeze all “discretionary” spending for the next three years. Obama’s version of kicking our domestic problems down the road for his successor since I am sensing that if things continue as at present he will turn out to be a one-term president. Even many of his original supporters are feeling frustrated. (See linked New York Times article for the details.)

This call for a spending freeze is a cynical pander to independent and Tea Party voters who are abandoning Democrats and Obama because of their perceived recklessness with the budget. Next year’s deficit, for example, is projected to reach at least $1.3 trillion.

It is cynical for a number of reasons. As defined by Obama, the “discretionary” part of the budget not only excludes entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security (I can understand not freezing or cutting them) but also all things military. Thus, by this faulty logic, the Pentagon and Homeland Security budgets (a huge percentage of the total) are not only sacrosanct but also are being redefined as quasi-entitlements.

Thus, Obama is talking about freezing less than one-sixth of our total federal budget. For a relatively pittance of savings, he will set off an internecine zero-sum feeding frenzy among all sorts of constituency groups (mainly members of his own party) all wanting to save their favorite program at the expense of others which may be of equal value. This will make the battles over aspects of the health care bill look like skirmishes.

We’ll see charter school advocates go after after-school programs; we’ll see cancer research advocates go after HIV programs; we’ll see ethanol sponsors attacking farm subsidy protectors; we’ll see national park preservationists wrestling with friends of endangered species. Get the not-so-pretty picture?

An audacious president wanting to reattract political independents turned off by business-as-usual would go after all the special interests, starting at the minimum with a freeze on military spending. Even better, he would call for across the board cuts in all parts of the budget, again exempting Social Security and Medicare.

If we’re going to have a dog-fight over which education or health or environment programs to cut—which could be good since not all are worth retaining--we should have at least equivalent ones over which weapons systems should be slashed or eliminated.

This is not only the right thing to do—freezing or modestly cutting everything is not in itself an irresponsible or radical idea—but it would also be the politically smart thing.

So, you say, if he could pull up his shorts and call for this, the Congress would still continue to do its thing.

That’s an easy one—veto any spending legislation that violates this directive. If necessary, shut everything down. It worked when Clinton called Gingrich’s bluff, and it would work even more powerfully now that everyone in the country is riled up and ready to throw out all the bums.

Which to me is getting to be a more and more attractive Plan C.