Prior to President Obama’s third State of the Union address, much of the buzz was about the ludicrous decision by many members of the House and Senate to sit with their counterparts from the opposing party in a show of “unity” and “civility” — supposedly in response to the shootings in Tucson which left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) fighting for her life. This despite the fact there remains no evidence – not a shred of any kind — that the shooter was motivated by political rhetoric from either side of the aisle.
The pundits mocked the SOTU as “prom night” and “date night” as Democrats and Republicans began pairing off. It resulted in awkward “couplings” like New York congressmen Peter King and Anthony Weiner sitting next to each other, while hardly acknowledging each other as the President went about trying to convince the American people that he’s gotten their message and is ready to change course.
The President’s speech was flat and lacking in specifics. It was however, filled with code words like “investment” and “innovation” – which he employed to camouflage his liberal agenda and continued desire for “stimulus” spending. Obama talked about government investing in “clean energy technology—an investment that will strengthen our security, protect our planet, and create countless new jobs for our people.” Notwithstanding the fact he’s spent the last two years weakening our nation by stifling the oil industry- killing jobs and making everything we buy more expensive, the President wants us to believe that “clean energy” — which kills 5 jobs for every 1 created in Europe — is the wave of the future for America. Additionally, the President apparently hasn’t heard that so-called “climate change” has been discredited and rejected by the voters.
In another example of President Obama’s tone-deafness, he made a pitch for the DREAM Act, which would create legal status for the children of illegal immigrants (and their families), attempting to tug at America’s heartstrings with talk of “the children of undocumented workers, who had nothing to do with the actions of their parents.” The American people have made it clear that until and unless the borders are secured and our immigration laws are enforced they are not interested in any legislation that would give legal status — much less a path to citizenship — to those that have entered our nation illegally.
Regardless of the fact that we already dump billions of dollars into the bottomless money pit that is AMTRAK, Obama proposed even more money for high-speed rail. While in major urban centers like New York City people do ride trains, there is no clamor for high-speed rail in America. The construction of high-speed rail would create many union jobs (a major payoff to a Democrat constituency) and an incredible boondoggle for taxpayers who would be stuck paying for the subsidies to support and run it for decades to come.
Ignoring his administration’s saddling of American businesses with hundreds of new bureaucratic regulations, the President touted the fact that he has ordered a review of government regulations. He conveniently omitted the fact that such a review is mandated by law every ten years and is not his idea at all.
President Obama, rather than acknowledging that his 2000-plus page healthcare law — full of government bureaucracy and liberty-stealing mandates — is hugely unpopular with voters, not to mention passed in a hyper-partisan manner, insisted that “instead of re-fighting the battles of the last two years, let’s fix what needs fixing and let’s move forward.”
The President made some good points about parental involvement in their children’s education. But he went in the wrong direction when he talked about continued federal intervention in what is by definition a state and local issue. Race to the Top, like its predecessor No Child Left Behind, takes money from the states, launders it through the bureaucracy of the Department of Education, and then sends a reduced amount of money to states that meet with the standards — not of parents and communities — but of federal bureaucrats and teachers unions.
Perhaps the most ridiculous and disingenuous of the President’s proposals was a freeze of annual domestic discretionary spending for the next five years at current levels. After all of the runaway spending of the past two years (as much as an 84% increase if you include the “stimulus”) his proposal would reduce our $14 trillion deficit by a meager $400 billion.
In contrast to the President’s 64-minute cure for insomnia, masquerading, as a speech was the Republican response delivered by House Budget Committee Chairman Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI).
Ryan’s speech, which was approximately 10 minutes in length, focused on our nation’s “crushing burden of debt” and deficit. While the Budget Chairman acknowledged that “no one person or party is responsible” for our debt, he also pointed to the fact that, “Since taking office, President Obama has signed into law spending increases of nearly 25% for domestic government agencies – an 84% increase when you include the failed stimulus.”
He also talked about the dangers of Obamacare to our economy and reiterated the Republican pledge to “replace it with fiscally responsible, patient-centered reforms that actually reduce costs and expand coverage.”
In an unusual move, Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann of Minnesota also gave a response the President’s speech on behalf of the Tea Party, which was carried live on CNN and on the Tea Party Express website. In her rebuttal, Bachmann reiterated many of Congressman Ryan’s points, while also including many more facts and figures.
The media, rather than focusing on Bachmann’s well-documented response, instead chose to focus on the awkward camera angle that the pool camera created and tried to manufacture a split in the Republican Party. Congresswoman Bachmann was looking into the Tea Party Express camera, but the camera that CNN aired live was to her left. She also began her address by specifying that she was speaking at the Tea Party Express’ “request and not to compete with the official Republican remarks.”
Thus the mainstream media continues to carry Obama’s water while our nation’s decline continues. Hardly surprising, but no less infuriating.
