After Massive Increases in Spending Obama to Offer Token Freeze in State of the Union Speech

If he's serious about fiscal responsibility, then veto Dems latest spending bills and earmarks!

Trying to prove he got the message from the Massachusetts election of Scott Brown, President Obama will reportedly offer a limited, kinda, sorta, just a little bit of a spending freeze, starting not for this year, but next fiscal year.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice?

But after a year of watching Obama renege on so many major promises he made during the campaign, will the voters buy this smoke and mirrors gimmick?

After Obama trashed John McCain's idea for a spending freeze during the 2008 election, he's now decided to do something very similar (though McCain's plan would have had teeth).

Even if Dems do go along with this very limited freeze it won't amount to a drop in the bucket. Karl Rove describes the massive spending increases Obama already signed into law. Obama raised non-defense discretionary spending 24% over Bush in his first year. There is no hint whatsoever that Obama would even consider reducing any of this.

At the very least if Obama was really serious about fiscal responsibility he could cancel billions remaining to be spent from the failed stimulus boondoggle or threaten to veto the latest Dem spending bills loaded with more of the earmarks Obama insisted he would veto (another promise broken).

Obama's "spending freeze" is an empty gesture designed to hoodwink the public into thinking he's doing something about the problem of runaway spending. But something tells me the voters won't be so easily fooled again.