It’s always where they go. Whenever big-spending politicians want to create the impression of fiscal discipline while doing nothing, or very little, of consequence, they propose a “freeze.”

The Massachusetts vote one week ago sent an unmistakable message that the public is beyond fed up with the massive governmental spending spree and debt run-up the Obama administration unleashed a year ago. Democrats are now running scared and searching for ways to show voters they have seen the light.

Right on cue and true to form, President Obama — a world-class spender if there ever was one — is set to announce that his administration will be cracking down on spending in his 2011 budget submission with a three-year “freeze” on spending.

But a spending freeze can only be understood in context. What is being frozen, and at what level?

The Obama freeze doesn’t apply to most of the budget. It doesn’t apply to entitlement spending, which is set to bankrupt the federal government in coming years. It doesn’t apply to the $800 billion “stimulus” bill. And it doesn’t apply to defense, homeland security, or veterans programs.

It only applies to a small sliver — about 17 percent — of the domestic budget with an annual appropriation every year. Moreover, these programs have already seen huge funding increases over the past two years. According to the Senate Republican Policy Committee, the programs subject to the freeze have been increased by nearly 20 percent since 2008. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that the appropriation bills the president just signed into law will add $13 billion to the deficit in 2010 alone, and $40 billion over five years, because of added spending for programs covered by the freeze. The Obama proposal would lock this spending into place instead of rolling it back. And the president hasn’t promised not to increase individual programs in the future. He is only saying the total for all of them won’t go up. Which leaves plenty of room for gimmicks — such as unrealistic “user fee” collections and cuts to programs no one believes will actually occur — which mask continued pressure for expansive government.

In reality, the Obama freeze is a purposeful diversion and sideshow. The nation is rushing headlong toward a fiscal crisis because of runaway government spending, and the Obama administration has no serious plan to head it off. Between 1789 and 2008, the federal government ran up $5.8 trillion in debt. In just the first three years of the Obama administration, CBO expects the debt to increase by nearly another $4 trillion. In 2010, CBO projects total federal spending will exceed $3.5 trillion, more than $500 billion over what was spent in 2008. Further, in 2012 and beyond, with realistic assumptions regarding extension of the Bush tax cuts, relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and restoration of planned cuts in Medicare physician fees, the government is headed toward $1 trillion budget deficits every year for as far as the eye can see.

This massive run-up in debt is set to occur just as the baby boomers head into their retirement years, pushing up costs in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Between 2010 and 2030, the population that is age 65 and older will rise from about 41 million to 71 million. CBO expects spending on the big three entitlement programs to rise from 9.8 percent of GDP in 2010 to 14.4 percent in 2030 — an increase of about 4.6 percent of GDP in 20 years. That’s like adding another Social Security program to the federal budget with no plan to pay for it.

So far, the president’s primary response to this looming budget and entitlement crisis is to propose to pile another runaway health-care entitlement program on top of the unaffordable ones already on the books. According to CBO, the federal cost of the health-care commitments in both the House- and Senate-passed health-care bills would reach $200 billion in 2019 and would increase about 8 percent every year thereafter. Meanwhile, the offsets to pay for this new spending are completely unrealistic, and the so-called “bend the curve” provisions are far too weak to make a difference.

After all that has occurred since his election in 2008, it’s going to take a lot more than a transparently political and largely meaningless “freeze” proposal to convince wary voters that the president isn’t just another big-spending liberal. Indeed, so long as the president continues to press Congress to pass his ill-conceived and costly health-care plan, no amount of budgetary posturing and PR will ever work. The public will see through it, and hold him accountable for doing nothing serious to defuse the ticking time-bomb of government spending that is out of control.