White House Insists Spending Freeze Not A ‘Hatchet’

President Obama and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).
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When the White House announced President Obama’s new plan to freeze discretionary non-security spending at 2010 levels for the next three years, Republicans fired up the way-back machine to say it was the same idea Obama criticized when his presidential rival Sen. John McCain pitched it last year.

Similar idea, but not quite the same, administration aides insist.

At the time, Obama mocked McCain during their debates as applying a “hatchet” where a “scalpel” was the better choice. Obama aides said today they are indeed using a scalpel by not proposing an across the board cut of all government spending, and since they have made the decision with careful consideration.

Also worth noting, they increased spending for the 2010 budget, so the freeze is at a higher level than what Obama and McCain were talking about in their October 2008 debates.

Vice President Joe Biden’s chief economist Jared Bernstein defended Obama in a blog post today at WhiteHouse.gov, stretching the scalpel v. hatchet metaphor further.

He said McCain touted “the hatchet approach of an across-the-board freeze.”

“The President was critical of that approach then, and we would be critical of it now. It’s not what we’re proposing,” Bernstein wrote in his post, titled “Budget Freeze-eology 101: Hatchets vs. Scalpels.”

He adds:

The entire theory of the President’s proposed freeze is to dial up the stuff that will support job growth and innovation while dialing down the stuff that doesn’t. Under our plan, some discretionary spending will go up; some will go down. That’s a big difference from a hatchet.

You can’t thread that needle with a hatchet. You’ve got to use a scalpel. That may be a truly lousy metaphor, but it’s good public policy.

Other points in the blog post defending the decision:

First, an important note on timing. No one is arguing that we should take our foot off the accelerator today, when the economic recovery remains fragile and job growth has yet to return. In fact, you’ll hear from the President tomorrow night about measures we should undertake right away jumpstart job creation. In his words and deeds, the President has made clear that recovery comes first. But that doesn’t mean we should wait to start changing the same bad habits in Washington that left a $1.3 Trillion deficit on our doorstep when we entered office in January 2009, especially when we can do so without cutting back on our jobs agenda.

Second, a little background on freeze-eology: there are two ways to do a freeze like this: (1) an across-the-board freeze on every program outside of national security; and (2) a surgical approach where overall totals are frozen but some individual programs go up and others go down. In short, a hatchet versus a scalpel.

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