Yes, the spending freeze is a joke

The first thing to get straight is that that this does not save the advertised $250 billion over 10 years. It does not even matter for three years. Discretionary spending is set each year, so this is in effect a one-year freeze. Period…

In the end, the most important aspect about the Obama freeze is that it is one of a much larger set of initiatives that address how Congress formulates its budgets. Obama wants a freeze. A bipartisan coalition wants a commission. There are proposals for spending caps, pay-as-you-go rules, and constitutional amendments to constrain the size of spending. This is real evidence that (a) there is a problem, (b) Washington gets that there is a problem, and (c) the larger body politic has no idea what to do about the problem. The first step in these circumstances is to change the process by which budgets are put together. The second step — often not taken, clearly more difficult — is to change the budgets that are put together…

Which brings us back to the Obama freeze. It is not a budget proposal that tackles the broken entitlement programs. It is not a fundamental rethinking of the role of government in a free enterprise system.