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Hello fans! There is a lot to talk about, so let me begin.
Before I give my thoughts, I would like to point out what I liked about President Obama's 'State of the Union' speech. I appreciated that he gave credit to the Bush Administration for the Bank Rescue Package. The Bush Administration lent a total of $240 Billion and the Obama Administration lent $7 Billion to the Banks bailouts. The money is now coming back and the tax payers are getting interest and dividend income along with return of the principal. I also liked hearing that he will finally be inviting Republicans to work together with him and has asked Republicans to put forth their ideas. He mentioned that he would be open to talking about off-shore drilling and energy plans from Republicans, which is also a plus. Obama also mentioned that he will be working on tax cuts for small business and will be cutting student loans for students. I will be keeping a close eye on these promises to see if President Obama follows through.
Overall, I think Obama's State of the Union address was okay. If President Obama were in my classroom, I would have given him a 'C-'. If he were running my company, I would have fired him. I was amazed that Obama didn't pivot to the center as I expected him to. This is what the majority of the American People would have wanted him to do. His inability not to listen to us will hurt his popularity even worse among the eyes of Americans. I'm afraid that President Obama will remain the most polarizing President in American History far surpassing George W. Bush.
Overall, I thought his speech was very partisan and scolding. It seemed more of a lecture rather than an inspirational speech. It was a speech more about Top Down, Big Government solutions rather than an empowerment speech to the people and small business.
I noticed that Obama played the 'Blame Game' a lot. Instead of telling us that mistakes were made and we need to go back to the drawing board with Republicans in a constructive way, Obama went on to blaming George Bush, The Banks, The Senate Republicans and the Supreme Court. It was also odd to me that President Obama scolded "Washington' and talked about Washington in the 3rd person as if he were an outsider on the 08' Campaign trail. I don't understand his message being that He and the Democratic Party have been 'Washington' for the past year. It was, as if, he was blaming his party, but excluding himself?
I also found a lot of discrepancies between what Obama lectured needs to change and what his actions reflect to those changes. For example, Obama went on to say that we need to put an end to lobbyist, after he just hired 12 high profile lobbyist. He called for earmark reform, after he signed a stimulus package with 8,570 earmarks totaling $7.7 billion. He scolded republicans for not being involved in the healthcare bill, after he, the democrats and special interest groups excluded Republicans from the bill not allowing them to provide input or solutions. Ironically, these lecture topics are the same rhetoric we heard in those 08’ campaign speeches.
I didn’t understand why Obama more less gloated to how he saved 2 million jobs, when in fact, 4 million jobs have been lost since he's been in office. Does he not know that we're at an increased10% unemployment rate and a 18% true unemployment rate? He now says that his focus is on jobs? With all due respect Mr. President, jobs should have been your first priority! Not a 1000+ page socialized healthcare bill that no wants! Boy, I wonder how much of our hard earned tax dollars were spent on that failing initiative?
I was hoping to hear something about reducing the deficit and balancing the budget while getting a clear, definitive vision of how we are going to reducing the $800 billion that China owns of our treasury notes........I guess I'll keep hoping.....?
From what I pulled out of Obama's speech, I don't think he understands that the people don't want a government takeover of Healthcare. Instead of telling us that we need to kill the bill and start from scratch in a bi-partisan way, President Obama went on to apologize for not explaining it well. MR PRESIDENT, you explained your healthcare bill several times. WE GET IT! We don't need another explanation, we need A NEW BILL!
Obama's speech reminded me of the endless speeches and promises he made on his 08' campaign trail. It seems as if he reads his speeches, does something else, and then goes back to the same Rhetoric?
The President also talked about a spending freeze at current levels for 3 years. This is meaningless. It sounds like a good idea, even though he was against it, before he was for it, but when you get into the details, it's a freeze so small, it is meaningless. Let me explain why. Obama will only freeze 17% of the budget. This sounds great on the surface, but figuring he just increased the areas to which he wants to freeze between 12.5% to 20% it evens out to his previous levels. So, what savings are we speaking of? The total freeze is $250 Billion dollars over the next 3 years. Given the Federal Budget for the next 10 years is 42.8 TRILLION DOLLARS, (That's $42,800,000,000,000.00) in case you were wondering. Out of the 42.8 TRILLION dollars, we save $250 BILLION? That works out to 0.58%.
IN CONCLUSION:
If Obama wants to create jobs, he can easily do so by getting out of the way and cut taxes. I have never understood why he won't? In the past 20 years, we've seen that creating jobs by cutting taxes has worked under Reagan, Clinton and Bush. So if the tax cuts worked then, why not now? The only explanation I can come up with is that he is so deep rooted in BIG GOVERNMENT philosophies, he refuses to see it. CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN?
Derek Hartman
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