Obama Getting the message? proposes spending freeze for 3 years...
President Obama will propose Congress freeze "non-security" federal spending for the next three years, senior administration officials said Monday.
The term "non-security" is broad. It will exempt costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, all other Pentagon spending, as well as the foreign aid, and the budgets of the Veterans Administration and Department of Homeland Security.
The freeze, therefore, will apply to the annual spending on day-to-day government programs that does not include mandatory spending on Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid,. Spending on these three programs alone this year is projected to equal 8.7 percent of the nation's Gross Domestic Program or 59 percent of all federal spending.
Officials defended an approach that held entitlement spending harmless.
"It can't be right to say because this is only one component of addressing the problem that, don't worry about it and let it rip," a top official said. "Imposing discipline here is one part (of the solution)."
In fact, the White House appears to relish a fight, sure to occur, with some Democrats who don't want a spending freeze of any kind in an election year.
"Do I think this is going to win us lots of kudos among some on Capitol Hill," said one official. "No?"
Administration officials said Obama will use his State of the Union address to urge Congress to impose the spending freeze for the next three budget years. If Congress follows suit, taxpayers will save $250 billion over 10 years. That figure reflects what would be spent without a freeze on "non-security" programs.
Next year, a "non-security" spending freeze would save between $10 billion to $15 billion, a fraction of the current $3.5 trillion budget. As a comparison, the "security" spending exempted from the freeze are as follows: $663 billion for defense, $56 billion for veterans, $43 billion for homeland security, and $53 billion for foreign aid.
"We're not here to tell you we've solved the deficit," an official said, conceding this move would leave a sizable deficit behind. "You have to take steps."
The projected 2010 federal deficit is nearly $1.5 trillion.
This spending totaled $447 billion in the 2010 budget. Senior officials said Obama will ask Congress not spend more on "non-security" spending than $447 billion in the budget years 2011, 2012 and 2013. This spending equals roughly a third of the overall annual federal budget.
The officials said Obama will seek increases in some spending on unspecified priorities such as education and the environment.
"Some agencies will be up, some agencies will be down," a senior official said.
Republicans said any freeze will be small in the context of federal spending under Obama's watch. They note the catch-all spending bill Obama signed in March that included leftover budgets from President Bush boosted spending by 8 percent and the catch-all spending bill he signed in December increased non-defense spending by 12 percent.
Administration officials said if Congress follows Obama's lead, it will have reduced non-security spending to below those allocated in 2008.
"This is not jacking up the price before putting something on sale," a senior administration official said.
To achieve some of this savings, Obama will propse a raft of spending cuts, including terminating and drastically cutting some federal progams. Obama proposed $11.5 billion in these reductions in his first budget. Congress approved 60 percent of them, according to White House officials.
"At some point, you do have to draw a line and say 'We have to re-orient what you are doing' and that's what is occurring," an official said.
"The president made these decisions the way a family would sitting around the dinner table," another official said. "It can't spend more money than it has and it has to make some decisions about what is vital. You can't afford to do everything you might have wanted to do."
Source is FOX NEWS, OH NOES
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Originally Posted by BanginJimmy
