In his State of the Union address,\u00a0President Obama proposed a five-year spending freeze to address the ballooning deficit. Some conservatives might consider this to be a baby step in the right direction, but I reject it outright. There are several fundamental problems with the proposal.<\/p>\n
First, Obama assumes that current spending levels in various government agencies are appropriate, more or less. But current levels evolved from previous profligate Congressional spending, most notably that in the last Congress.\u00a0If Republicans accept the notion of a freeze, then they are passing on an opportunity to reassess the entire budget.<\/p>\n
Second, like most budget freeze proposals, Obama’s proposal exempts a big chunk of the budget. In reality, the President’s initiative addresses only nonsecurity, discretionary spending, about 15% of the total budget. This is more about symbolism than substance because total spending is guaranteed to rise.<\/p>\n
Finally, the notion of a freeze ignores the historical pattern that underlies budget deficits. Liberals are constantly calling for more spending, whether to turn around a struggling economy\u00a0or–as Obama put it–to foster innovation and competitiveness. The net effect over time has been\u00a0a constant and substantial growth\u00a0in government. Tax increases are never enough to solve the problem because more spending lies around the corner.<\/p>\n
The truth is simple. The national debt is a spending problem, not a tax problem. The only way to resolve it is to CUT spending. In the absence of a sophisticated agency-by-agency proposal, perhaps a 20% across the board cut might make sense for starters. Members of Congress could propose further cuts in some agencies and possible increases in others AFTER the new, lower agency baselines are implemented.<\/p>\n
In the end, it\u2019s all about CUTTING, NOT FREEZING. This is real change we can believe in.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In his State of the Union address,\u00a0President Obama proposed a five-year spending freeze to address the ballooning deficit. Some conservatives might consider this to be a baby step in the right direction, but I reject it outright. There are several fundamental problems with the proposal. First, Obama assumes that current spending levels in various government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/battle4liberty.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}