By
Warner Huston
I sat through President Obama's 2011 State of the Union Address last
night. During the event I live Tweeted the whole thing (You can read
that all at
http://twitter.com/#!/warnerthuston) and ended up with an empty feeling and a headache.
Obama's address was long on calls for spending, filled with bromides,
and weighted with jaw, jaw but pretty short on substance. In fact, it
seemed like his 12 new spending ideas and his patriotic vagaries was
simply his first step onto the 2012 campaign trail as opposed to a
serious address to the nation.
Obama fittingly began his address citing John Boehner, the new
Speaker of the House, and memorializing the wounded Congresswoman
Gabrielle Giffords. He then said that we had a "robust" debate in our
politics and averred that it was one thing for the parties to sit
together that night but it depended on what they all do "tomorrow" and
he used that point to plead for moving forward with more
bi-partisanship.
Tellingly, even as Obama has paid lip service to bipartisanship for
three years, when he became president neither he nor his party made any
moves to implement any bipartisanship. In fact, when Democrat Nancy
Pelosi was Speaker of the House she never met with any Republicans on
anything. This whole claim or bipartisanship is simply a farce on
Obama's part and Obama continued that farce in the SOTU speech.
Obama went on to claim that the stock market had "come roaring back,"
and that the economy is growing again. He intimated that the Internet
was one of the engines of this growing economy, yet he didn't seem to
remember to mention that his own Federal Communications Commission is
well on the road to regulating the Internet to death and stifling that
powerful engine.
One thing Obama had right early in the speech was when he noted that
despite our bad economic times, the U.S. is still the largest, most
powerful economy in the world. We have a tendency to imagine that it has
all fallen apart, but the truth is we are still the number one economy
in the world. Despite our troubles, we should remember this.
Obama waxed enthusiastic over our "freedom" and our get-it-done
nature, he praised our entrepreneurialism and free enterprise, but here
is where he first began to go off the rails. We are in a "Sputnik"
moment, he claimed, and the only way to insure that we stay on top is
for government "investment" in research and development.
"Investment" is Obama's byword for spending and from here Obama began
rolling out all sorts of areas we need to "invest" in. This is typical
Big Governmentism and just more over liberal spending.
Obama laid out his ideas to "invest" in absurd boondoggles like high
speed rail and high speed Internet for "93% of America." High speed rail
is certainly a boondoggle. After all, few municipal rail systems in
America make money. Almost all of them lose millions of tax dollars
every year. And the cost of putting in high speed Internet in the most
remote areas is so cost prohibitive that it would make the whole system
too costly. Billions spent in such areas to serve so few people is not
sensible.
Obama also wanted to "reinvent our energy policy." Yet his entire
presidency has been used to quash our energy sectors. Gas, Coal, Oil,
Nuclear, all these areas have come in for punishment under the Obama
regime. And even as he claims we should "invest" in green energy he
never answers to the fact that so-called green energy technologies
cannot fulfill even a fraction of our energy needs.
The president then went on to plead for more money for education.
Missing from his assessment of American education was any sense that the
biggest impediment to our kid's education is teachers unions. He called
for people to serve the nation as teachers and demanded we “fix” our
educational system.
Again, he misleads here. He and his party are responsible for
eliminating a program that was working well to help disadvantaged kids
get a better education. Right there in Washington D.C. Democrats have
torpedoed a school voucher program that was generating excellent
results.
But, you see, the unions were against this successful program and
that is why Obama’s wonderful, soaring rhetoric in defense of our kids
was empty talk. When it comes to choosing between kids and unions, Obama
and the Democrats choose unions.
Next Obama called for more people to get a college education. "We
will once again have the highest number of college graduates in the
world," Obama said.
Unfortunately, we've dumbed down our curriculum so badly that a
degree isn't worth the paper it’s printed on. And our lower education
is so bad that many colleges have to put their young first year students
through remedial classes just to get up to speed to start college.
None of this is because of a lack of money.
Obama then gave us whiplash with an about face. He careened from
asking for all sorts of vague new spending to claiming that we have to
cut the budget and become fiscally responsible. But after 10 minutes or
more of talking cuts he warned that no cuts should be made in his
favorite programs.
He called for a federal spending freeze at current levels to last for
the next five years. Naturally, this is a trap to catch Republicans and
not a serious proposal. After all, if we freeze everything as it is
that means
cutting can occur because it is frozen in place!
Republicans want to eliminate programs and spending, not freeze them in
place.
In the end, Obama’s confusing message was that we need new spending,
we need to cut spending, but we cannot cut his favored programs. In
other words, liberal status quo.
The most interesting thing about his speech, though was that it was
pretty empty of specifics. He had a lot of general ideas, a lot of
bromides, and a ton of vague statements, sure, but he asked for no
specific amounts of money, he did not offer to cut any specific programs
and he did not announce any concrete programs of his own.
In fact, the whole speech was reminiscent of his 2008 campaign, a lot
of generalizations and yes-we-cans but not much on specifics. This is
what made it seem clear that this speech was his first step back on the
campaign trail and will set the tone for his initial campaign for
reelection in 2012.
I've seen Obama soar at the podium. This was not one of those times.
January 26th, 2011, Fairfax, VA—Americans for Limited Government (ALG) President Bill Wilson today urged congressional action to reduce the 2011 budget deficit, which the 
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