Having vastly increased non-defense, non-entitlement spending in the process of racking up unprecedented deficits, President Obama is now expected to call in his State of the Union address for freezing such spending at these new, much higher, levels. NPR reports that Obama will call for a 5-year freeze on further increases to non-defense domestic discretionary spending. 

Since such spending has already risen by 24 percent under Obama in the base budget, and by 84 percent when including the “stimulus,” this hardly qualifies as an aggressive, or serious, budget-cutting proposal. In contrast, Republicans are proposing to reduce such spending to 2008 levels -- to where it was before Obama took office -- which would save roughly $100 billion and thereby cut the deficit by about 8 percent (based on this year's $1.267 trillion projected deficit).