It's too late for a federal spending freeze

Later tonight, in his State of the Union Address, President Obama is expected to propose a freeze on federal spending — or at least on a little bit of it. The freeze would not affect "security" programs, including the military, nor would it apply to entitlement programs such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and others. The net impact of $250 billion over 10 years sounds impressive until you remember that over the next decade, the federal budget is expected to roll up another $9 trillion in debts. Last year's budget deficit was a record-shattering $1.4 trillion, and this year's deficit will be almost as large.

A spending freeze that exempts the better part of the federal budget is not going to fix this problem. The budgetary problem has gone way beyond a simple gesture like a spending freeze. If you're going to trim a $1 trillion-plus deficit and get the nation back to the surplus it enjoyed just a dozen years ago, elected officials will have to make some painful decisions. And the first decision is that we can't afford all the things the government is buying.

It's too late to just trim back on existing programs; we're going to have to eliminate whole programs. We can't do all the things we've been doing. We'll have to decide what programs to eliminate: Farm subsidies? NASA? Federal grants? The latest new ship, tank or airplane? Tax deductions for mortgages? Ethanol subsidies? Like a person with $20,000 in credit card debt, the federal government is going to have to find out what it can live without. As my father used to say, it's going to have to learn the difference between wants and needs. The current course of spending better than a trillion more than you take in every year is unsustainable, and a relatively painless spending freeze won't fix the problem.