1937?

I understand the politics of this, but, man, nearly my adult life I've been hearing this song.

WASHINGTON — President Obama will call for a three-year freeze in spending on many domestic programs, and for increases no greater than inflation after that, an initiative intended to signal his seriousness about cutting the budget deficit, administration officials said Monday.

The officials said the proposal would be a major component both of Mr. Obama’s State of the Union address on Wednesday and of the budget he will send to Congress on Monday for the fiscal year that begins in October.

The freeze would cover the agencies and programs for which Congress allocates specific budgets each year, including air traffic control, farm subsidies, education, nutrition and national parks.

But it would exempt security-related budgets for the Pentagon, foreign aid, the Veterans Administration and homeland security, as well as the entitlement programs that make up the biggest and fastest-growing part of the federal budget: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Isn't nearly every dollar of Pentagon spending labeled under the category of "security-related?"

And I realize that much of the stimulus is either spent or is already committed to infrastructure projects that won't start until this year, but we are still perilously teetering on the precipice of another recessionary dip, aren't we?

Further, the failure of the administration to make clear (and take a stand) that health care reform remains a priority that will create jobs and reduce the deficit is increasingly egregious.

Finally, there is the actual process of determining what is frozen, what is cut, and what continues to get funded. It won't be pretty, or progressive, of that I'm pretty sure. As Ezra Klein writes,

Then comes the collision between the budget and Congress. And here things get dicier. Congress can stick to the administration's freeze but throws out the administration's proposed cuts. The way this works is simple: The administration will target worthless programs, like agricultural subsidies, in order to preserve good programs. But the reason worthless programs live in budget after budget is they have powerful backers. And those backers will rush to Congress to protect their profits. You think Blanche Lincoln, who chairs the Senate Agricultural Committee and is behind in the polls for her 2010 reelection, is going to let her state's subsidies get gored?

Now you've removed some of the cuts, but you still want to hit the overall target. So the cuts could get reapportioned to hit programs that lack powerful constituencies. Many of those programs help the poor.

We were, just a few weeks ago, on the verge of a massive shift towards providing a real safety net to the poor and, yes, the middle class.

Sigh.

UPDATE: Jared Bernstein, progressive economist and Joe Biden's economic policy advisor, responds in a lengthy, informative interview on Rachel Maddow's show last night: "There's going to be no stupid Hooverism around here."