Barack Obama plans to propose a five-year discretionary spending freeze in tonight’s State of the Union address. Is this a good idea? A preemptive capitulation to Republican deficit hawks? Or what?
I vote for “or what.” Let’s all keep in mind that budgets are set one year at a time, and they’re mostly set by Congress. The president has a certain amount of agenda-setting power, but that’s about it. Members of Congress will do whatever they want, and next year they’ll once again do whatever they want. If that means spending more money, they’ll spend more money. Obama could announce a hundred-year discretionary spending freeze and it would mean about as much as a five-year freeze. This is more a PR exercise than anything else and should be evaluated on those terms.
