Congress Giveth and Taketh Away

Lots of analysts on the left and the right are attempting to read the tea leaves on President Obama's announcement of a spending freeze. Of course, the Defense Department and a number of other social services agencies are exempt in Obama's plans, and as the Congressional Budget Office wrote in an assessment of the Fiscal 2010 Defense budget, Defense spending is likely to rise, in some cases because of increasing costs, in others because Congress will give Defense employees more than the department intended:

The department's resource requirements to execute the same plans could be even greater. CBO has also estimated some "unbudgeted" costs that reflect the likelihood that weapon systems would cost more than initially estimated; that medical costs and fuel prices would grow at rates faster than DoD has anticipated; and that pay raises the Congress enacts for military personnel and DoD's civilian employees might exceed the percentages in the department's plans. Furthermore, additional appropriations may be necessary to fund overseas contingency operations.

All of which is a semi-convoluted way of saying that I find the psychology of spending freezes almost inexplicable. Nobody really wants to freeze spending entirely and seriously. But everyone wants to look like they support freezes as a concept.