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Rachel Maddow spoke with Biden's Economic Policy Advisor Jared Bernstein, who went over some of the details in Obama's proposed three-year spending freeze on some programs.

The response has been tepid, if not hostile.

Paul Krugman calls the plan "appalling on every level." Says Krugman: "It's bad long-run fiscal policy, shifting attention away from the essential need to reform health care and focusing on small change instead. And it's a betrayal of everything Obama's supporters thought they were working for. Just like that, Obama has embraced and validated the Republican world-view — and more specifically, he has embraced the policy ideas of the man he defeated in 2008. A correspondent writes, 'I feel like an idiot for supporting this guy.'"

Writes Bob Herbert in the NYT: "Mr. Obama may be personally very appealing, but he has positioned himself all over the political map: the anti-Iraq war candidate who escalated the war in Afghanistan; the opponent of health insurance mandates who made a mandate to buy insurance the centerpiece of his plan; the president who stocked his administration with Wall Street insiders and went to the mat for the banks and big corporations, but who is now trying to present himself as a born-again populist. Mr. Obama is in danger of being perceived as someone whose rhetoric, however skillful, cannot always be trusted. He is creating a credibility gap for himself, and if it widens much more he won't be able to close it."

Says Maddow: "A spending freeze is like trying to put out a fire by pouring gasoline on it."

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP…