Obama Freeze Not So Cool

Charles Krauthammer sums up the basic problem:

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.  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… and he knows independents worry about debt and deficits and spending…

And apparently, he think independents are innumerate morons. 

I don’t think independents are morons.  But just in case, let’s dispense with those confusing word thingies, and look at a pretty picture instead. 

Here’s a chart comparing the current US debt ($12.3 trillion), actual Federal outlays in 2009 ($3.5 trillion), and the proposed freeze (using Krauthammer’s $15 billion figure).  I apologize in advance for making the chart so tall, but it was the only way I could make the bar that shows the “freeze” tall enough that you can see it.