There is the old joke, “What do you call a yacht full of lawyers at the bottom of the sea? Answer: A good start.” The same applies to President Obama’s spending freeze. It’s a good start — and he needs to be encouraged for that. But it’s a long way from solving the problem.

The spending freeze, as explained by press secretary Robert Gibbs, will be for three years and will only apply to non-defense discretionary spending, which is a mere 17 percent of the budget. That leaves the president, as I understand it, with his massive spending for education, his green-energy initiative, his health-care increases, and his cap-and-trade proposed spending still intact. Those costs, plus those of entrenched entitlements, are way too high and need slashing with a large machete. Press Secretary Gibbs, in his press conference today, was short on specific targets for cuts and instead he kept referring to eliminating “duplicative” programs. Whether he means duplicative or duplicitous, both types of programs need to be eliminated. Let’s start with a yacht full of federal programs at the bottom of the sea. It’s a good start.

— Burton Folsom Jr. is a professor of history at Hillsdale College and author of New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.