Chart of the day

Via Chris Edwards, who adds:

Here’s the important point: a very large part of the 2009 spending spike of $699 billion will be sloshing forward into 2010 and later years. (As illustrated by my fancy arrow in the chart). The new CBO budget estimates (Table A-1) show that only 18 percent of authorized stimulus funding will be spent in 2009, with the rest sloshing forward.

Obama is “freezing” the budget only because he already has a large amount of cash floating around from the stimulus bill that he can spend on all his favorite big government projects in 2010 and beyond. In budget-speak, federal spending measured in “outlays” will be far from frozen.

Finally, a president’s proposals for discretionary spending beyond the current budget year are meaningless. Obama will be back with a new budget in February 2011, no doubt with a whole new set of assumptions and priorities.

Worse than just what a puny measure the spending freeze is in the context of reining in the deficit is how liberals have been largely apoplectic over the proposal. There is simply no scaling back of government they can stomach, in their minds it is all absolutely essential.