President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech Wednesday evening was both inspiring and sobering. It was a strong performance by a gifted orator and included a long list of proposals to help boost employment and reduce the national debt. The speech also included a mild scolding or shaming aimed at members of Congress seated before him, in the form of reminders of the public's dissatisfaction and anger with Washington, D.C., career politicians most concerned about re-election and the status quo of constant partisan bickering.

Obama reminded America of his campaign promises of hope and change, while admitting it is not an easy thing to deliver and he cannot do it alone. Members of Congress seemed to listen thoughtfully, but it's unlikely they will change their behavior.

In an apparent reaction to last week's upset victory of Republican Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Obama spent most of his speech focused on the economy, creating jobs and reducing debt.

Responding to the public's growing concern over deficits, Obama promised a three-year freeze on discretionary government spending, starting next year, that he said would be a serious down payment on the debt. But by Thursday morning, fact-checking reports widely disputed his claim that such a freeze would produce anything close to the $1 trillion he promised.

One commentator said if the freeze were extended for even 10 years, it might produce savings of only $250 billion. It's also worth remembering that a spending freeze would have to be approved by Congress.

Obama said the spending freeze, along with a "line-by-line" review of the federal budget to eliminate waste and end programs that don't work, would add up to $1 trillion savings, an amount he says would equal the amount his administration has added to the deficit through its stimulus spending and federal bailouts, in reaction to the troubled economy.

But eliminating spending, even when widely viewed as wasteful or ineffective, is difficult because every dollar of federal spending and every tax break has a constituency that will fight with lobbying and campaign contributions, to keep that spending or tax loophole in place.

A spending freeze might initially sound encouraging to those wanting to see more fiscal responsibility in Washington, but a deeper look reveals something less impressive.

Obama's idea for a freeze of non-discretionary spending would address only about $445 billion in a $3.5 trillion budget. Halting growth on just a small slice of the budget pie would have very little effect, especially given the rapid rate of growth predicted in entitlement spending for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Obama's proposed spending freeze would target federal departments from Agriculture and Education to Energy and Interior.

But what it would not touch is more important to note. It would not control spending increases for Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid — the programs that are most responsible for ballooning deficits.

The president's proposed spending freeze also would not impact defense, national security or veterans spending.

And, of course, the proposed spending freeze would not eliminate the need for the United States to pay the interest on the existing debt.

The president's focus on the importance of bringing down the national debt served as a reminder of the great danger that the debt poses to America's future. According to David M. Walker, a former comptroller of the United States, the General Accountability Office predicts that interest on the national debt will quickly overcome all other federal spending categories. In Walker's new book, "Comeback America," he notes that the GAO predicts that within just 12 years, and even without an expected increase in interest rates, "our interest payments would become the largest single expenditure in the federal budget." Walker also notes, "And what do we get for that? Nothing."

Elsewhere in his book, Walker says that by 2040, "all of our federal tax revenues will add up to enough to cover only our two biggest expenses: interest on our debt and Medicare and Medicaid. Everything else — Social Security, defense, education, road building, you name it — will fail to be funded."

In his speech, Obama hinted at the importance of bringing federal spending under control. As welcome as this presidential attention to the issue is, Obama's tone was not sober enough when it comes to the danger posed by out-of-control spending and mountains of debt. The sad fact is that Americans want more from their government than they are willing to pay for — an attitude that clearly is leading the country toward disaster.

In his other proposal to help control spending, Obama's pledge to issue an executive order creating a bipartisan fiscal commission to study long-range solutions to the nation's looming financial crisis sounded good. But in reality, such a commission would have very little impact or authority. The best hope for real progress on reducing the national debt and bringing spending under control would be a commission created by Congress, but that idea was killed in recent days by equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans in the Senate. And for that, Congress should be ashamed. The very people responsible for runaway spending and irresponsible increases in the national debt now refuse to even form a commission to study the issue and make recommendations, many of which might be politically unpopular.

The president's speech Wednesday was inspiring in many ways and seemed to suggest Obama is taking a tough new position on reining in federal spending and bringing down the national debt, while not giving up on issues like health care reform and the war on terror. In reality, though, the speech appears to have been just talk, even if backed by good intentions. Obama made so many promises and urged such unlikely changes in how Congress works that, in the end, the speech felt hollow — full of admirable ideas, but too often falling short of telling the full story, while also asking members of Congress to act for the greater good rather than their own self-interest and re-election prospects.

Given what was said and unsaid, the speech was strangely both inspiring and depressing.