Good news on the budget

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that President Obama is planning to announce a three-year freeze “on discretionary spending unrelated to the military, veterans, homeland security and international affairs.” Medicare and Social Security are also exempt from the proposed freeze. While not huge, it is a great first step, and it also destroys the Beltway consensus against such freezes that have hogtied budget hawks from both parties over the years. Traditionally, the yearly increase in discretionary spending is as certain as sunrise and sunset. If President Obama forwards the freeze Wednesday during his State of the Union, the cultural impact on Washington’s big spenders will be much larger than the actual money saved, at least in the immediate future. That is not an unimportant consideration.

But the Republican leadership is already pooh-poohing the idea according to the Journal and much to my dismay. This is a significant step forward; I don’t understand why Republicans wouldn’t encourage further efforts in this direction with a little gesture toward conciliation. This should be a time to employ the carrot, not the stick.

As I have pointed out previously, despite its protestations, the Republican Party leadership has absolutely zero credibility on the spending issue. During the Bush presidency – especially when they controlled Congress – the Republicans passed not one significant piece of legislation freezing discretionary spending. And yet now they are clamoring that the Obama proposal is not enough? I agree that it’s not enough – even the Obama spokespeople admit as much. But when you’ve been in power and done nothing about the issue on the table, as is the case with veteran Republican congressmen, I don’t see how you can position yourself as fiscal watchdogs. And you certainly can’t afford to be petulant when someone is willing to float the idea of a spending freeze, no matter how limited it might be.

As an important aside, does this proposal essentially kill health care reform? I mean, it’s going to be difficult to argue for a massive social benefit entitlement program in the teeth of a spending freeze.

The communications coming out of Republican congressional offices should have hammered this point, not the proposed freeze itself. If you must criticize the Democrats for something, hammer them on the seeming incompatibility between the freeze and the desire to add 30 to 40 million people to the health care rolls. That’s the angle, not the lame quotations circulating in the press from House Minority Leader John Boehner’s office, which basically criticize moves in the right direction with snarky crap like, “Given Washington Democrats' unprecedented spending binge, this is like announcing you're going on a diet after winning a pie-eating contest.” Over the years, Republicans might not have won many pie-eating contests, but it sure wasn’t for lack of trying. After eight years of spectacular rises in federal spending under George Bush, Republicans can hardly paint the Democrats as the party of indiscipline.

Addendum, 10:15 p.m.: Judging from early reactions in the progressive blogosphere regarding the freeze proposal, my point about the freeze impacting health care is not lost on many folks. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight.com suggests as much.