Obama: No , Seriously I Want to Ban Earmarks & Freeze Spending Now, Really! Déjà Vu

According to Jake Tapper of ABC, Obama will call for a federal spending freeze and an earmark ban in tonight’s State of the Union speech:

Pursuing a path of deficit reduction and government reform, President Obama will tonight in his State of the Union address call for a ban on earmarks and he will propose a five year budget freeze on non-security related discretionary spending, ABC News has learned.

The proposals come as the president prepares to tackle the deficit and debt and as he faces a House of Representatives in Republican hands, many of whose members include those affiliated with the Tea Party who may be willing to embrace both moves.

This is really laughable. He’s called for an earmark ban, since 2007, when he was running for the presidency, and that never stopped him from signing any bills that had thousands of earmarks in it, like Stimulus and his health care legislation.

Second, it seems that he’ll be speaking out of both sides of his mouth tonight. He’s supposed to call for a freeze on spending but then go on to say that we need to spend more. Huh?

The president will propose some new spending in certain areas that address the speech’s theme of “How We Win the Future”: innovation, education and infrastructure. But those increases will be proposed within the context of a proposed partial budget freeze.

I’ve wrote on his call for more spending earlier.

This really is really rather pointless. Republicans have already banned earmarks in the House and the Senate Republicans were able to kill the omnibus bill that was full of earmarks, when the Democrats tried to ram it down their throats during the lame duck.
Also, as Ed Morrissey explains, this budget “cut” isn’t really a cut:

It’s a cut in Beltwayese, in other words, because normally we’d expand spending instead of reducing it. At least that isn’t as bad as Washington usually gets about cuts, which politicians usually define as a decrease in the rate of spending increases. And don’t expect that definition to become defunct in the next two years, especially on the Democratic side of the aisle on Capitol Hill.

Let’s not even get me started on Obama’s record on reigning in spending.

VA Gov. McDonnell: Obama's Wrong, We Need More Spending Cuts Not More Spending

Virginia Governor McDonnell went on Fox, today, and responded to reports that Obama will call for more stimulus spending during his State of the Union Address on Tuesday. Not surprisingly he disagrees with President Obama:

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell delivered last year's GOP response to the State of the Union. McDonnell spoke to Fox News on Saturday about what he hopes the president will focus on as he prepares to address the nation Tuesday.

McDonnell recommends Obama make spending cuts a priority. Citing budget cuts made in his own state, the governor said reduced spending in Virginia has "had a huge impact." While acknowledging that finding places to cut funding isn't easy and that "tough choices" are involved, the changes made under McDonnell have resulted in a huge surplus for the state.

Chief among the governor's priorities for Virginia has been job creation. McDonnell said Virginia is currently ranked "third in the country" when it comes to new jobs in large part "because of the time and investment" that's been put into "job creating programs."

Amid reports that President Obama's Tuesday address will call for increased spending in infrastructure and education, McDonnell predicts the president's message won't be "well received" by Americans. Instead, the governor suggests President Obama focus on fiscal cuts and "reduction of the national debt." McDonnell thinks these themes, combined with an emphasis on incentives for growing small business will help the president strike the right tone.

If polls are any indication, McDonnell is absolutely right. The American people won’t like hearing the president say that he wants to spend more. It’ll kill whatever momentum that he had gained in winning back the independents and will make him look, again, like a far-left ideologue. His approval numbers would probably fall a bit, too.

Update:

I was trying to get the video embedded, but I can't find an embeddable one, right now, since Fox disables the ability to embed their video. So, here's the link to see it, for now. I'll keep looking for one that can be embedded and embed it, if I can.

Obama's New Economic Policy, Just Like His Old Policy: Spend, Spend, Spend

Obama’s new economic is just like his old economic policy. Wall Street Journal is reporting that, in his State of the Union, Obama wants to spend more instead of less, you know, because it worked so well the last time:

President Barack Obama will call for new government spending on infrastructure, education and research in his State of the Union address Tuesday, sharpening his response to Republicans in Congress who are demanding deep budget cuts, people familiar with the speech said.

Mr. Obama will argue that the U.S., even while trying to reduce its budget deficit, must make targeted investments to foster job growth and boost U.S. competitiveness in the world economy. The new spending could include initiatives aimed at building the renewable-energy sector—which received billions of dollars in stimulus funding—and rebuilding roads to improve transportation, people familiar with the matter said. Money to restructure the No Child Left Behind law's testing mandates and institute more competitive grants also could be included.

While proposing new spending, Mr. Obama also will lay out significant budget cuts elsewhere, people familiar with the plans say, though they will likely fall short of what Republican lawmakers have requested….

Republicans are casting the White House's pivot toward competitiveness as an excuse for bigger government and more spending. They say a surge in federal spending and a $1.3 trillion budget deficit are impeding job creation, and dramatic spending cuts are needed immediately.

In the House, Republicans are pushing to cut $100 billion from the annual budget as soon as this year. A coalition of House Republicans proposed Thursday cutting $2.5 trillion in spending over a decade, pushing nondefense discretionary spending down to 2006 levels for 10 years.

This is bad for Obama for two reasons:

1.)High deficits are part of the reason why we are in the economic trouble that we are in, today. Polls have consistently said that people want Washington to reduce the deficits and return to fiscal sanity.

2.)Unemployment rate has been stalled over the last two years, since the stimulus passed. People don’t believe that federal stimulative spending worked the first time, and they won’t like Obama doubling down with another massive stimulus package, when the only long term result will be more debt that our children and grandchildren will have to pay down the road.

Why would Obama want to do this? He needs to move to the center, if he has any shot at winning in 2012. This will be seen by the voters as a sign that Obama hasn’t learned his lesson from the failure of the last stimulus and that he is still the far-left ideologue that everyone on the right and Republicans have said that he is.

Maybe he’s just saying it to appease his base but has no intention to, actually, pass new spending because he knows that the Republican-led House will never agree to it. Even if he is just appeasing his base, it won’t look good to the American people. However, if his words don’t turn into any real action and legislation, what he says on Tuesday will be long forgotten by November 2012.