Honesty, I’ve bee mulling that (spending freeze) over for the past couple hours or so and I don’t know what to think. I’ve heard
rumors Obama will talk about tax credits in the State of the Union Address too. I don’t know what to think.
I have the feeling this is a purely populous move after the Tea-Baggers violated Massachusetts.
Or, maybe the Whitehouse is finally bending to logic. Six months ago Noisy Dove was screaming that the clumsy pork laden state-backfill “stimulus” bill was a shameless waste of money. Today – I’m sitting here watching MSNBC (Obama channel) and they are all in agreement now – finally – that the “stimulus” DIDN’T WORK!!!
So maybe Obama is giving up on the broad-brush ideal that government spending of any kind is stimulus – which it’s not. Only spending on things that produce economic activity greater than the investment is stimulus. Otherwise they just shovel money out of one place and fill in another. Only in this case we’re printing the money or borrowing it from outside the US and shoveling it into sub-economies, like state bureaucracies – or trickling money out on infrastructure. Oh – and the randomly places barrels of pork too.
But – you know what this most likely is? This is most likely more of the same Obama we’ve seen for the past 2+ years. He says one thing while he does another. With all the spending he has increased I doubt any spending freeze a year from now will be an actual spending cut – probably more of a spending shift – since military and economic spending is exempt. There’s the TARP funds too that Obama plans to spend as they come back – instead of pay off the loans we used to get the funds. So if you count that – and whatever else I’m not thinking of – I doubt this freeze will do anything mathematically significant.
It will give Dems in Conservative states the chance to say “Spending Freeze” this fall while Tea-baggers are chasing them out of office though.
LOL – Astroturf.
Raging Kitty Design