President Bush threw a bone to fiscal conservatives in tonight’s speech with these lines:

America’s prosperity requires restraining the spending appetite of the federal government. I welcome the bipartisan enthusiasm for spending discipline. So next week I will send you a budget that holds the growth of discretionary spending below inflation, makes tax relief permanent, and stays on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009. My budget substantially reduces or eliminates more than 150 government programs that are not getting results, or duplicate current efforts, or do not fulfill essential priorities. The principle here is clear: a taxpayer dollar must be spent wisely, or not at all.

There’s no list yet, but I’m not holding my breath. As Citizens Against Government Waste reminds us: “Last year, President Bush targeted 13 poorly-performing programs for elimination; Congress continued funding for all but one.” CAGW’s report, Prime Cuts, recommends 592 specific spending cuts that could save taxpayers $217 billion in fiscal 2005 and $1.65 trillion over the next five years. Why doesn’t the president recommend each and every one?

On immigration, Bush offered the usual platitudes:

America’s immigration system is also outdated — unsuited to the needs of our economy and to the values of our country. We should not be content with laws that punish hard-working people who want only to provide for their families, and deny businesses willing workers, and invite chaos at our border. It is time for an immigration policy that permits temporary guest workers to fill jobs Americans will not take, that rejects amnesty, that tells us who is entering and leaving our country, and that closes the border to drug dealers and terrorists.

No recognition at all here from Bush that the vast majority of Americans favor stricter immigration enforcement against both “willing” employers who have put profits over national security and the willful illegal alien lawbreakers they are employing. No word of support for House Republican efforts to push for secure identification and asylum reform. Even Hillary would have done better.

On Social Security, it was smart to remind Congress and the American public of a few entitlement reformers in both parties who had offered prior fixes:

Fixing Social Security permanently will require an open, candid review of the options. Some have suggested limiting benefits for wealthy retirees. Former Congressman Tim Penny has raised the possibility of indexing benefits to prices rather than wages. During the 1990s, my predecessor, President Clinton, spoke of increasing the retirement age. Former Sen. John Breaux suggested discouraging early collection of Social Security benefits. The late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan recommended changing the way benefits are calculated. All these ideas are on the table. I know that none of these reforms would be easy. But we have to move ahead with courage and honesty, because our children’s retirement security is more important than partisan politics.

Captain Ed concludes: “He’s much improved over last year, and I think he gets better every year he’s in office. He may never be considered a great orator (for good reason), but he delivers some of the best political speeches since Reagan…Freedom will be his great theme, just as the New Deal was FDR’s or the Great Society was LBJ’s. W’s will be the Force of Human Freedom.”

David Frum says: “Ever since Ronald Reagan invented the tradition, every State of the Union has had its moments of emotion. All too often in the past, these moments were cynically manipulative or unworthy of the high importance of the event. Not tonight. The stories of Safia Taleb al-Suhail and Byron Norwood represented the outermost limits of human courage, suffering, and sacrifice in the public realm.”

Frank J. liveblogs the Democratic response: State of the Jackasses. James Joyner also tries to liveblog Reid and Pelosi, but finds it excruciatingly hard to pay attention.

Jeff G. translates the Dem response.

Ramblings’ Journal notices something about President Bush and Cynthia McKinney.

And the rest of the best is at Wizbang.