Spending Freeze – Unspun

In what I hope will be a continuing series of shorts, I’d like to try objectively dialing back the spin used by the media and government to convince the masses of untruths or barely-truths.

The NYT reported on Jan. 25, 2010 that the White House has proposed a “spending freeze” on a portion of the government’s annual spending – on discretionary spending. This portion equates to about 17% of overall budget. Only 17%? Well, that’s still quite a bit even by government standards. If the government were to stop 17% of it’s spending, that would equate to hundreds of billions of dollars. But that’s not what’s happening. It’s not a “spending freeze”. This is such extreme spin, we ought to consider it an outright lie. They’re not intending on freezing any spending whatsoever. What’s really been proposed is a:

Spending Rate Freeze

That’s right. No non-spending happening here. For the next three years, government officials can not increase the rate of spending in certain areas of the government. Nor can they decrease it! Additionally, along with this budget proposal, they increase those rates well above last year’s rates before they get locked in. There’s no proposal to stop or “freeze” any spending.