Krauthammer on Obama's "Freeze"

It's not a hatchet. It's not a scalpel.* It's a Q-tip. It's a fraud. This is a miniscule amount. It excludes Defense, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs. It excludes all the entitlements, which are 60 percent of the budget. It excludes stimuli past and future — the two thirds of the near trillion-dollar stimulus that has not been spent. All of that is excluded.
It excludes the $1 trillion that would end up being spent on health care if it were passed.

Compounded by the fact that if Obama loses in 2012, this three year "freeze" becomes null and void after one.

What it is, is a $15 billion reduction in a year, 2011, in which the CBO has just announced we are going to have a deficit of $1.35 trillion, which means it is — it's a rounding error, it's lunch money. . . .

This isn't a real cut. It's an appearance of cuts. It's a maneuver as a response to what happened in Massachusetts because he lost the independents – Obama – 3-1, and he knows independents worry about debt and deficits and spending. . . .

So he announces a freeze which is meaningless. Remember, these departments enjoyed a 20 percent increase in budget as a result of what Obama and the Democrats had done in 2009. So you are freezing [discretionary spending] at an extraordinarily high and unusual [level].

I'm also told that the cost of the surge in the Middle East is also factored in there, which is a cost that will not be incurred every year for the next three years. Plus, it is not an across the board "freeze", so it will be business as usual for most of government. The only thing this is an attempt to "freeze" is criticism of the reckless spending of this administration!

*Updated: Apparently, on the campaign trail Obama said:

"It sounds good. In fact, an across-the-board spending freeze is a hatchet, and we do need the scalpel, because there are some programs that don't work at all. Some programs are underfunded. And I want to make sure we are focused on the programs that work."

H/T The Corner
Cross posted at Say Anything