Today in Washington, D.C. - Jan 26, 2011: On Obama's Spending Freeze: "Completely Inadequate"; "A Near Triviality"; "A Perpetual Eating Binge"

The Senate began consideration of S. Con. Res. 14, a resolution recognizing the victims of the Tucson shootings and, a vote on the resolution is expected around 2 PM.

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) held a press conference today to announce they have introduced legislation to save the successful, bipartisan D.C. school choice program, which has helped thousands of disadvantaged students gain access to a quality education. The Scholarships for Opportunity and Results (SOAR) Act would renew the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), which the Obama Administration is phasing out despite strong evidence of success.

President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address last night included some positive bipartisan notes on things like trade agreements and lowering the corporate tax rate, but unfortunately he failed to show leadership on one of the most critical issues facing our country: the massive and still-increasing debt and deficit.

Senator Jim DeMint, chair of the Senate Conservatives Fund responded to the SOTU:

The President used his State of the Union Address last night to disguise his liberal agenda in free-market, conservative rhetoric. Yet the specific policies he promoted are part of a deliberate strategy to grow the government at the expense of our personal freedoms and jobs. For all of the talk in the media about how the President is moving to the center, he asked Congress last night to increase the role of the federal government in almost every area of our lives.

Rather than acknowledging the failure of his stimulus program to create jobs, the President claimed it saved our economy. Even worse, he called for more stimulus spending to "win the future". Winning the future requires less government and more freedom, not the other way around.

Our Constitution is not indifferent toward liberal and conservative policies. It enumerates the very limited powers of the federal government and reserves everything else for the states.

• Instead of calling for more federal intervention in our schools, the President should have called for reforms to allow states to opt-out of the ineffective and burdensome No Child Left Behind law.
• Instead of calling for more federal intervention in our nation's highway system, he should have called on Congress to devolve these decisions to the states, which can build their own roads and bridges.
• Instead of calling for a freeze in spending, the President should have called for a dramatic cut in spending to limit the size of government and balance the budget.

In nearly every area, the President is pushing America in the wrong direction. Unless Americans see through the rhetoric and stop his policies, we will lose our future. It's that simple.

Charles Krauthammer put it well analyzing the speech on Fox News: “The major issue is in November, the rejection of his agenda over the first two years and the insistence on the shrinking of government. He did not even address the issue of deficit reduction until three quarters of an hour into the speech. and when he did, he offered what is a near triviality.” The Washington Post editors were also unimpressed. “He disappointed,” they write today. “The president promised to freeze discretionary spending - exempting, that is, defense, veterans affairs, homeland security, Medicare and Social Security - for five years. Given that he'd already promised a three-year freeze, this was more incremental than earthshaking and, as he acknowledged, in any case affects only 12 percent of the federal budget.” And CNN’s David Gergen didn’t mince words, saying, “I thought the failure of the speech came on the deficits. … It wasn't serious -- It wasn't a serious effort to come to grips with what is a towering problem.”

Appearing on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” this morning, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell told Chuck Todd and Savannah Guthrie that President Obama’s plans to control spending simply weren’t enough. “I did find his suggestion on spending reductions completely inadequate,” he said. “What he’s talking about is freezing at a historically record-high spending rate that we’ve had the last two years. . . . We need to get back the 2008 level; that's a significant whack out of our annual discretionary spending. . . . That is a significant reduction.”

Gabriela Schneider, Sunlight Foundation noted the were disappointed in President Obama’s apparent flip-flop on earmark transparency. "In just one year, the president went from a reasonable call for earmark transparency to an outright veto threat, despite the House and Senate crafting the bi-partisan 2010 Earmark Transparency Act. Such a veto threat will likely cause earmarks to proliferate through a different, underground procedure — what Sunlight calls “nearmarks.” Earmark disclosure is a better solution than an outright ban because it creates accountability for the process, and maintains congressional prerogatives, while giving the public access to review earmark requests online in a single, centralized searchable website."

If nothing is done, America’s fiscal future looks grim, as new estimates from the Congressional Budget Office make clear today. Roll Call reports, “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released its fiscal outlook for January, projecting a record $1.5 trillion deficit this year and another $12 trillion over the coming decade if current tax and spending policies are extended.” And Politico adds, “For the current fiscal year ending Sept. 30, CBO is projecting a deficit of $1.48 trillion, or $414 billion more than it assumed last August. And in fiscal 2012—for which President Barack Obama will submit his budget next month—CBO’s baseline now assumes a deficit of $1.1 trillion compared to $665 billion last summer.”

House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) responded to  the CBO's report: "Earlier this month, the Obama Administration asked Congress to raise the debt limit. Republicans responded by saying the American people won’t tolerate such an increase unless it's accompanied by major spending cuts and spending reforms. Instead of committing last night to those spending cuts and reforms, the president called for more ‘stimulus’ spending. It’s clear the president and his team haven’t gotten the message the American people sent in November: we can’t spend and borrow our way to prosperity. To boost private-sector job creation and help the economy grow, we need to cut spending and enact serious budget reforms to ensure we keep cutting spending.”

As Senater Leader McConnell said yesterday, “I’m all for the President changing his tune, but unless he has a time machine he can’t change his record. And if we’re going to make any real progress in the areas of spending, debt, and reining in government, the President will have to acknowledge that the policies of the past two years are not only largely to blame for the situation we find ourselves in, but that unless we do something to reverse their ill-effects, the road to recovery and prosperity will be a bumpy one.”

From the grassroots heartland of America, Curtis Coleman on The New South Conservative responded, "The $1.5 trillion deficit is the biggest budget gap in history and joins the deficits in years 2009 and 2010 as the largest share of the economy since World War II. According to the CBO report, “debt held by the public” will reach a staggering 76.7 percent of GDP by 2021. When this new deficit is added to the current debt, America’s interest payments alone will approach $500 billion per year, or approximately $10 billion per week. In view of these staggering deficits, President Obama’s proposal to “freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years” is . . . like [A Perpetual Eating Binge] saying, “I’m going to eat five cheeseburgers, three bowls of ice cream and two pieces of chocolate cake today, then I’m going on a diet and I promise I won’t ever eat more than that in any day during the next five years.”

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