So far, we're getting indications that one major part of his speech will be about deficit reduction and his spending freeze from the New York Times:
President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.
The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.
White House administration officials are saying this is all pretty much politics to look tough on the deficit, but one administration official has said that if voters go for this, then they'll also be looking at cutting popular entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare:
It is the growth in the so-called entitlement programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security — that is the major factor behind projections of unsustainably high deficits, because of rapidly rising health costs and an aging population.
But one administration official said that limiting the much smaller discretionary domestic budget would have symbolic value. That spending includes lawmakers’ earmarks for parochial projects, and only when the public believes such perceived waste is being wrung out will they be willing to consider reductions in popular entitlement programs, the official said.
"By helping to create a new atmosphere of fiscal discipline, it can actually also feed into debates over other components of the budget," the official said, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity.
The Washington Post also confirms that cutting the deficit will be a major part of President Obama's State Of The Union speech:
Obama's commitment to cutting deficits will be an important theme of his address to Congress, administration officials said, and will be fully detailed in the budget he is due to submit to lawmakers early next week. Administration officials have declined to say specifically how the president plans to reduce deficits projected to add more than $9 trillion to the national debt during the next decade. But he has endorsed several measures aimed at meeting that goal, including the adoption of stringent pay-as-you-go budget rules that would bar lawmakers from passing programs that increase deficits and the creation of a bipartisan commission to work toward a balanced budget.
The Senate is scheduled to vote Tuesday on a plan to create a budget commission, though supporters say they lack the 60 votes needed for adoption. Obama has told lawmakers that if the measure fails, he will issue an executive order creating such a task force with broad power to change the tax code and spending on entitlement programs.
Joan Walsh basically called this political gimmick of posturing to look tough on the deficit a trick that no one was buying in her editorial:
But wasn't just the Maddow show; apparently Obama advisors briefed the liberal blogosphere to reassure folks that this freeze won't hurt at all. As Marc Ambinder explains:
"The freeze is irrelevant to health care because Medicare, Medicaid and taxes are all mandatory. So too are many of the programs for the neediest, such as unemployment insurance and Pell Grants. And many of the other programs were plussed up recently so the White House is freezing them at a very high level. A second stimulus package wouldn't be included either."
So who do they think they're fooling? If they're telling the truth, and dozens of social programs will be exempt from the freeze, or even increased -- hey, we can even pass a second stimulus! -- then why is Obama selling what he's doing as a freeze? To win Republican support? Not gonna happen. To make Evan Bayh happy? (The freeze is exactly what Bayh recommended to Bloomberg's Al Hunt on Friday.) Who cares?
And do they think all Republicans are stupid and/or completely cut off from the liberal blogosphere, so they won't learn that this is just a pretend freeze, that will let Democrats grow social spending for their priorities? Bernstein said it would let Obama cut "wasteful spending" and thwart the lobbyists who defend every imaginable government program. Really? If everyone knows the freeze isn't real, and it's just about proving your program is important to the recovery or health care or some other protected priority, it will be a lobbyists' free for all anyway.
This charade is almost worse than if Obama was dead serious about an across the board freeze. Both Michael Lind, on Salon, and Matt Yglesias at Think Progress have suggested that Obama is trying to win over Republicans by picking a fight with the left (um, doesn't he already have one?) and the denunciations by people like Maddow and Robert Reich play perfectly into their trap. If they're right, Obama's having his Sister Soulja moment--and tonight the role of "Sister" will be played by folks like Maddow and Reich, who supported him. Nice!
Even Nate Silver is dubious about the political effect that this so-called spending freeze will have on voters watching the SOTU:
I'll let the economists talk about the wisdom of curtailing government spending in the middle of a massive consumption deficit, but what concerns me more is the politics. Specifically, the sort of cognitive dissonance that is going to be created in the mind of the average voter when the White House is promising to freeze spending on the one hand (or, more accurately, this will be the media caricature of their gambit), and on the other, trying to defend its stimulus and its health care reform package, trying to excuse the bailout package as a necessary evil, and perhaps trying to champion new programs. Sure, the story is probably being somewhat overreported, and the spending "freeze" will only apply to certain types of spending. And it's applied relative to the already-elevated levels of spending from the FY2010 budget, and not some earlier baseline. There's more bark here than bite, in other words: "freeze on discretionary spending" means something different on K Street than it does on Main Street. But that's precisely what will make the White House (or at least the Democrats collectively) look flip-floppy. Every time the Democrats propose a jobs bill, or a big investment in alternative energy, you're going to have Krauthammer and Kristol chomping at the bit to go on Fox News and proclaim Obama to be a hypocrite. Pity Robert Gibbs trying to parse his way out of that. This is not how one wins news cycles -- or elections.
Edit / postscript: I'm fairly certain that the "spending freeze" will poll well in the near-term, and may even take Obama's approval numbers up a point or so with it. But Obama's not the one on the ballot in 2010; in the medium run, it's most likely effect is to confuse voters, and in the long run, it'll probably either be forgotten about or become Another Broken Promise™. The narrative about the "perpetual campaign" is generally kind of facile, but this whole thing has a weirdly campaign-trail quality to it.
But, hey, at least Evan Bayh is pleased as punch about this political gimmick of cutting the deficit:
Bayh, a centrist Democrat who's long been a deficit hawk and who has consulted with the president many times in recent months, praised Obama's proposal as a smart policy and political move.
"It was a good move, it was a strong move, and I think people across this country will say it's about time," Bayh said during an appearance on MSNBC. "It's not only the right substantive to do, it's also the shrewd political thing to do."
President Obama will be owning up to the mistakes he's made in the health care process in the State Of Union according to The Hill:
The president added that he will make amends for that failing during his speech to a join session of Congress tomorrow night.
"It's my responsibility and I'll be speaking to this at the State of the Union, to own up to the fact that the process didn't run the way I ideally would like it to and that we have to move forward in a way that recaptures that sense of opening things up more," he said.
I'm glad that he'll be owning up to the mistakes he made such as the issue of transparency around the entire health process, making backroom deals with PhRMA, and allowing special interests to have their way with the Senate bill. It's what turned off voters to the health bill when they saw it hijacked it by the same ol' politics in Washington, D.C., where Senators watered down the health bill for their lobbyist friends and pocketed cash from them at fundraisers.
And this State Of The Union may very well be President Obama's last chance to get health insurance reform passed. Will he come down on passing only the Senate bill, or fixing it via reconciliation so it can pass the House? Or will he go for separate bills to fix it? At this point, I don't know yet, but here's the key graf from the Roll Call:
"President Barack Obama’s State of the Union Address on Wednesday may give him his last, best chance to reboot his health care agenda in the minds of the public and regain momentum shattered by the loss of the Senate Democrats’ 60-seat supermajority. House and Senate Democratic leaders have been talking behind the scenes about possible ways to revive their legislation but still don’t have a plan a week after Republican Scott Brown rocked their world by winning the Massachusetts Senate special election, aides said. ... Obama’s speech isn’t expected to resolve every detail, but it could serve as an opportunity to smooth over the intraparty warring that has taken place since the Massachusetts election and make more clear whether he will still push hard for a comprehensive health care bill or dramatically scale back his ambitions, aides said."
It's why we MUST CALL the Senate to fix the Senate bill FIRST via a reconciliation fix and then have the House pass the Senate bill. That's how the order goes, and it works.
CALL YOUR DEMOCRATIC SENATOR AND TELL THEM TO FIX THE SENATE BILL FIRST VIA RECONCILIATION! PLEASE REPORT YOUR CALL HERE!
Can you help us get more signatures on our petition so Eve can deliver it to Speaker Pelosi and Senator Reid?
SIGN HERE TO HELP US PUSH FOR RECONCILIATION NOW!
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