Last night Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address to the country. As with any and all Presidents who give such a speech, he affirmed the state of our union was strong. However, given polling data and the current climate in the United States, that seems to be anything but the truth. We are more divided now than we have been. However, it was the things that Obama said during the speech that I wish to address.
First Obama tried to blast Congress for the sequester:
We are more than halfway towards the goal of $4 trillion in deficit reduction that economists say we need to stabilize our finances. Now we need to finish the job. And the question is: How? In 2011, Congress passed a law saying that if both parties couldn’t agree on a plan to reach our deficit goal, about a trillion dollars’ worth of budget cuts would automatically go into effect this year. These sudden, harsh, arbitrary cuts would jeopardize our military readiness, they’d devastate priorities like education and energy and medical research. They would certainly slow our recovery and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. And that’s why Democrats, Republicans, business leaders, and economists have already said that these cuts — known here in Washington as “the sequester” — are a really bad idea.
The problem with his statement and dumping the blame on Congress? It was his White House that conceived and proposed the sequester, as Bob Woodward pointed out back in October 2012. While bringing the hammer down on the sequester, he has yet to provide a plan to deal with it.
Using the tired slogan of “not one dime,” as in people making less than $250,000 won’t see one dime of tax increase, Obama stated, “Tonight I’ll lay out additional proposals that are fully paid for and fully consistent with the budget framework both parties agreed to just 18 months ago. Let me repeat: Nothing I’m proposing tonight should increase our deficit by a single dime. It is not a bigger government we need, but a smarter government that sets priorities and invests in broad-based growth.”
Yesterday, CBO Director Doug Emendorf was clear in telling the Senate Budget Committee that permanently elevated debt levels will be with us for at least the next decade.
The thing you have to keep your eye on in Obama’s statement is the little word “should.” After all, the Obama administration has yet to put a price tag on all his proposals the will actually be bigger and dumber government.
He then took on health care costs and Medicare:
On Medicare, I’m prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission. Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs. And — and the reforms I’m proposing go even further. We’ll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors.
While he states he is willing to make reforms to Medicare, he doesn’t have a plan to do so, as usual. Additionally, his claim that Obama care is slowing health care costs is simply a lie. The impact is hitting hospitals, families, employers, employees, along with the federal government and the states. This doesn’t begin to take into account the erosion of Constitutional rights of religious conscience or privacy concerning the Second Amendment.
Obama also proposed the same tired “roads and bridges” mantra that he did as he ran for President in 2008.
“Ask any CEO where they’d rather locate and hire, a country with deteriorating roads and bridges or one with high-speed rail and Internet, high-tech schools, self- healing power grids…Tonight, I propose a “Fix-It-First” program to put people to work as soon as possible on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country.”
Apparently all that stimulus money didn’t exactly create “shovel ready” sustainable jobs. Instead, it seems it helped to shovel BS to the American people as evidenced here. It seems Obama is in line with House Democrat Steny Hoyer (MD) who believes that welfare stimulates the economy. Only in this case the welfare will probably be provided to the same kind of scams that they were before, which resulted in several bankruptcies and investigations, not to mention $825 billion put on the American tax payer’s debt bill.
Of course Obama couldn’t let the night go without touting the Federal government’s involvement in education.
“So let’s do what works and make sure none of our children start the race of life already behind. Let’s give our kids that chance.”
I agree. Let’s do what works and eliminate what doesn’t. For starters, let’s eliminate the Federal Department of Education, which is unconstitutional. That should save billions per year alone. Second, let’s get the State out of the education business and return that responsibility to parents. In my opinion, it is the homeschool movement that is the hope for this nation’s future, not the public education system.
Then there was the issue of legalization of illegals… sorry immigration reform:
“Real reform means strong border security, and we can build on the progress my administration’s already made, putting more boots on the southern border than at any time in our history and reducing illegal crossings to their lowest levels in 40 years. Real reform means establishing a responsible pathway to earned citizenship, a path that includes passing a background check, paying taxes and a meaningful penalty, learning English, and going to the back of the line behind the folks trying to come here legally. And real reform means fixing the legal immigration system to cut waiting periods and attract the highly skilled entrepreneurs and engineers that will help create jobs and grow our economy. In other words, we know what needs to be done. And as we speak, bipartisan groups in both chambers are working diligently to draft a bill, and I applaud their efforts.”
Well, he is right about one thing, Democrats and RINOs are working on rewarding those who have broken the law with citizenship. However, he has done nothing to secure the borders. His administration has encouraged weapons to be transferred over the border resulting in hundreds dead and have also encouraged Border Patrol agents to not use their firearms, but rather to run, hide and throw things. No, this man’s administration has done nothing to secure borders and it seems they are intent on compromising border security in order to put illegals on the path to citizenship.
Obama, obviously not familiar with how economics in the real world actually works, proposed raising the minimum wage. He said, “Since the last time this Congress raised the minimum wage, 19 states have chosen to bump theirs even higher. Tonight, let’s declare that, in the wealthiest nation on Earth, no one who works full time should have to live in poverty — and raise the federal minimum wage to $9 an hour.”
As his administration and Democrats in general demonstrate, they have no idea about what a minimum wage job is for. It is not to sustain families. It is not to provide mass wealth or get people out of poverty. They are beginner jobs in which an employer and employee agree for what the time is worth to the individual providing the work. While I understand the idea behind the minimum wage was to keep people from taking advantage of others, it has gotten way out of hand and could be better handled between employer and employee. Besides, you can’t be providing increased wages when the government is sticking its hands in your pocket for more money. Inevitably, that increased wage will come back to haunt the individuals receiving it as cost of goods go up to compensate for the increased wages. Ultimately it will kill jobs. The minimum wage is a bad idea and raising it is an even worse idea.
One of the most glaring, hypocritical statements from Obama was whenever he stated, “As long as I’m commander-in-chief, we will do whatever we must to protect those who serve their country abroad, and we will maintain the best military the world has ever known.”
This comes from the mouth of a man that called the shooting at Ft. Hood by a radical jihadist “workplace violence” and referred to those killed in combat and the Bengahazi attack as “bumps in the road.” It is a man that basically did nothing to save the lives of four Americans as they were murdered by Islamic radicals. This is a man sending young men to fight against radical Islamists in foreign wars, while his administration welcomes the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House and even supports the efforts of Al-Qaeda, while providing aid to foreign governments dominated by radical Islamists.
We could also point out the way in which he treats the military and the removal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”, and with the Senate’s help repealed Section 925. Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which read:
(a) Any person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an animal is guilty of sodomy. Penetration, however slight, is sufficient to complete the offense.
(b) Any person found guilty of sodomy shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
Finally, a subject which I’ve written much about, gun control, came up.
One of those we lost was a young girl named Hadiya Pendleton. She was 15 years old. She loved Fig Newtons and lip gloss. She was a majorette. She was so good to her friends, they all thought they were her best friend. Just three weeks ago, she was here, in Washington, with her classmates, performing for her country at my inauguration. And a week later, she was shot and killed in a Chicago park after school, just a mile away from my house. Hadiya’s parents, Nate and Cleo, are in this chamber tonight, along with more than two dozen Americans whose lives have been torn apart by gun violence. They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote. They deserve a vote. Gabby Giffords deserves a vote. The families of Newtown deserve a vote. The families of Aurora deserve a vote. The families of Oak Creek, and Tucson, and Blacksburg, and the countless other communities ripped open by gun violence, they deserve a simple vote. They deserve — they deserve a simple vote.
There is no question that the story of Hadiya Pendleton is a tragic one. So are the other stories Obama mentioned like Gabby Giffords, the Aurora shooting and Newtown massacre and our hearts are indeed torn. However, this idea of deserving a vote against the Constitution and playing on people’s emotions is nothing short of treason. The Second Amendment is a part of our Constitution. It reflects the duty and responsibility we have to protect ourselves and ensure a free state for future generations. For an elected official, especially one who is in the highest office in the land to call for any kind of gun control is nothing short of treason as far as I’m concerned. What is worse is the wild applause that his statements garnered from other elected officials.
My fellow Americans, the state of our Union is anything but strong and that should be evidenced by the last election in which the country was divided. When men like Barack Obama are set on the destruction of not only the Union, but the enslavement to a corrupt and bloated Federal government that continues to trample upon the rights of the people, then we are teetering on the brink of destruction and must push back against it. Just remember, this same government was established to protect liberty, not trample upon it.
