President Obama’s State of the Union address was in trouble hardly after it began when he said that “we can say with renewed confidence that the state of our union is stronger.”
Economically, that’s hardly believable, with a $16.5 trillion national debt and annual budget deficit topping $1 trillion for the fourth consecutive year. Neither the legitimacy nor effectiveness of Obama’s proposals seemed to hardly improve from his introductory claim.
- The president started his claim of a recently stronger America by saying that both parties worked together to reduce the deficit by more than $2.5 million, “mostly through spending cuts, but also by raising taxes on the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.” That’s difficult to say, given that spending cuts to tax increases came at a 10:1 rate.
- “We can’t ask senior citizens and working families,” he said, “to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and the most powerful.” The problem is that U.S. government transfers to individuals in 1960 totaled about $24 billion in current dollars. By 2010, that total was almost 100 times as large. Even after adjusting for inflation and population growth, entitlement transfers to individuals have grown 727 percent over the past half-century.
- “Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs,” he said. That’s difficult since most provisions of the law—including a penalty for not paying for health insurance—doesn’t go into effect until 2014.
- The Congressional Budget Office (“CBO”) has said that health care spending has grown much more slowly in recent years, both for federal programs and overall, than it did in previous years. In response to that slowing growth, the CBO reduced its projections for future Medicare spending. However, the CBO did not specifically credit the Affordable Care Act as the reason for lowering the projections. Some aspects of the law, the report said, will slightly increase federal outlays in Medicare and Medicaid.
- “We produce more oil at home than we have in 15 years,” he boasted. Why then, are we paying so much more for gas than 15 years ago? Gas was $1.03 on average nationally in 1998—and even with inflation considered, a 40 percent change has occurred in that time frame.
The unfulfilling assertions amounted to an often-lazy address ideologically—if even enthusiastic orally—from the president. It occurred whether it was when he argued about defeating natural disasters even through executive order, or in stating that legislation like the Fairness Payment Act will be a cure-all to the oft-overrated issue of gender pay discrimination. If the suggestions aren’t already a violation of federalism as defined in the 10th amendment, they are too lofty in their objective, lacking a realism that the American public deserves to hear in tumultuous times.
After saying that the U.S. will continue to “keep the pressure on a Syrian regime that has murdered its own people and support opposition leaders that respect the rights of every Syrian,” Obama said his administration would “stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace.’ Promises of the sort remain hollow given Obama’s incessant apologies about American behavior in foreign policy between 9/11 and the start of his presidency.
It was filled with a level of substance found in a sequence in the latter half of the speech, when the president suddenly diverted from his meticulous briefing of various policies to lay out a vague laundry list of issues. They included “eradicating poverty in the next two decades,” “connecting more people to the global economy,” “empowering women,” “giving our young and brightest minds new opportunities to serve” and “by realizing the promise of an AIDS-free generation.”
Generally, they are about as realizable as personally assuring that Iran wouldn’t use a nuclear weapon against the U.S., as Obama promised in his final foreign policy debate against Mitt Romney in late October in Boca Raton, Fla.
Though many of the president’s expectations outlined until his ambiguous list were misaligned or not appropriate for his national administration to mandate, at least he hadn’t yet delved into nothing more than feel-good fodder. Now, we can’t attribute that to him after all.
The president did get it right near the end of the address.
“It is not a bigger government we need,” Obama said, “but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.”
That’s refreshing. But given several trepidations about some of his other expectations, validity of the statement is, once again, in question.
ainst the more experienced Biden, managed to work in a few zingers and bring more laughs from the audience, his performance will be more notable for the vision he presented to America, especially as encapsulated in his closing statement.
