I watched the State of the Union on CNN. Was it just the colorful clothes women in the Democratic Party were wearing, or was CNN using a different color filter to make everything really pop? Seriously, President Obama almost looked like an orange crayon at times.

Anyway, was anyone else floored by the proposal for a 3 year spending freeze starting in 2011? According to the President's State of the Union Address, President Obama wants Congress to freeze spending for three years, starting in 2011, on all spending not related to National Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. Most shocking, he said he was willing to enforce this by veto if necessary.

Now, there are several things to consider here. First, the President sees the coming storm of conservative, anti-government involvement momentum that's on the verge of throwing all Democrats out of office. By 2011, when the spending freeze will start, Republicans will likely have one of the two Houses of Congress under their control. Likewise, at the state level, Republicans are going to take back a large number of Gubernatorial and State Legislative positions. This plays well for the President politically in that it will severely hurt the states (which get a tremendous amount of money from the Federal Government) and it will prevent Republicans from forcing the President to sign any legislation that he may be ideologically opposed to, since there's ALWAYS a cost. By 2014, a lot of people are going to be really annoyed by this policy and it could potentially do some long term strategic damage to the Republican Party's "limited government" platform... not that the party actually advocates it anymore.

Here's my concern, however. The government spends a lot of money maintaining interstates and highways... is that a national security asset? That can be argued. But what about our National Parks? Is the Grand Canyon going to be closed along with every other National Park? What about education funding? What about the Post Office? Will our mail boxes become our FedEx or UPS boxes? Can Amtrak survive without government investment for three years?

Don't get me wrong, we need to curb spending and eliminate programs. I also believe spending freezes is a good first step to getting there. But shouldn't there be a transition beyond, "Republicans won a lot of elections, so we're not going to spend any money except for what's absolutely necessary anymore?" This was one of my problems with Ron Paul and his army of idiots armed with tin foil hats. Granted, Ron Paul would have probably banned national security spending because it's all part of a CIA conspiracy or some nonsense like that.

If he stays true to his word, which is not exactly a given with this President, the political fallout could be very interesting to watch. If you're a conservative Republican running for President and the incumbent Democrat has literally stopped spending money, how exactly do you campaign against him? I mean, how can you beat a big government liberal who, for the last two years before the election, stopped growing the size of the government and stopped spending money?

How do you run an aggressive campaign against a pro-abortion President who isn't spending money on abortion? Making Supreme Court Justices a political issue is too boring and dry for effective campaign messages.

Before he died, Governor Frank O'Bannon of Indiana gave something like this a try. At one point during his time in office, the Governor refused to sign any NEW spending legislation. I was actually in the process of abandoning my Democrat identity at the time and adopting a new Republican one, a move that coincided with me learning more about our political system. Needless to say, I was a little shocked that a Democrat didn't want to spend money. The policy got a mixed response from a lot of people, but Indiana was in serious trouble with an enormous debt. He died in the middle of his second term in 2003, leaving his incompetent Lt. Governor to fill his spot until Mitch Daniels ran for Governor and won in 2004.

Now, things are tough in Indiana relative to just a few years ago, but to be honest, Governor Daniels has insulated Indiana from the national economic collapse remarkably well with his strong job building policies. Allow me to explain... when President Obama talks about job creation, he's talking about spending tax dollars to pay laborers (normally unionized) to do construction or service related jobs for the Government. When Governor Daniels talks about job creation, he's talking about making Indiana a more friendly place for industries and companies to settle, do business, and create private sector jobs. Indiana's government is able to pass new spending legislation, but Daniels has set up systems and checks to ensure that the money being spent is being used in the most effective and responsible way possible. That hasn't been happening at the Federal level and, unfortunately, the ability to spend money without wasting money seems to be one the Democrats are doomed to never understand.

"That's why it's called 'budgeting."