fired tear gas, the dmon stlaigss the large eflt seen in egypt in 30 years. demonstrators say they were inspired by protests that brought down the government in tunisia. the clock is ticking down to the state of the union speech. now we have insight on one plan the president is ready to unveil. for that, let's bring in our senior white house correspondent, ed henry. >> reporter: what's going on, ali, is the fact that officials are confirming that the president will announce tonight a proposal -- it's not written in stone yet -- to freeze nondefense discretionary spending for five years. what does that mean? to break it down, it means that he wants to freeze at the current levels spending for health, education, you name it, across the board in the federal government at that level for five years. but he's going to exempt defense spending, veterans health care, et cetera, as well as homeland security. so you sort of take the security stuff out of it and just freeze all other federal spending.