Peggy Noonan, former Reagan speech writer currently with the Wall Street Journal, said the January 24, 2012 State of the Union Address was too long and a speech about everything is a speech about nothing; she also said there were things brought up that made her wonder where he’s (the President has) been since they weren’t put in play recently. The speech was 65 minutes long and although many of the viewers may know more about what’s been going on in the current administration, I felt the speech covered what Americans needed to hear as the Republican candidates continually distort the picture making it sound like our economy is not in an upswing. Donna Brazile, an ABC Political Contributor, said the President talked about the programs, policies and goals that will take us forward. Ron Brownstein, an ABC Political Analyst, said he drew a line in the sand surrounding economic fairness and responsibility as well as a very vigorous defense on a number of issues and an argument for retrenching government. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels gave the Republican response to the State of the Union Address. Because his response was so long and of course I have comments, I’ll address it in 7 parts. Governor Daniels started with saying that Republicans salute the President for his progressive pursuit of the murderers of 9/11/01 and for bravely backing long overdue changes in education. The closest thing we had to change in education was with George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law. If Republicans felt changes were needed in education they should have made them in the 28 years they were in control of the Presidency and/or Congress. It is nice to see that they recognize Obama is making a difference in his 3 years in office.
Governor Daniels went on to say - But when President Obama claims that the state of our union is anything but grave he must know in his heart that this isn’t true. The President did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America but he was elected on a promise to fix them. He cannot claim that the last 3 years have made things anything but worse; the percentage of Americans with jobs is at the lowest for decades. In 3 short years an unprecedented explosion of spending with borrowed money has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. Yet the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead.
Governor Daniels is right in that the President did not cause the crisis we are in – the long reign of the Republicans did. I’m not going to disagree that our country is in a bad situation but his failure to acknowledge that things are getting better is bothersome, even Mitt Romney when pushed conceded that things are on an upswing. On November 30, 2011 it was reported that the S&P 500 finished even, with no loss, and the DOW after a tumultuous ride (with the worse drop coming when our legislators didn’t readily come up with a budget) closed up 5.5%. I want to point out that Barack Obama is the second Democratic President we’ve had since Ronald Reagan. Before him we had Bill Clinton (1993-2001) and at that time both the House of Representatives and Senate were controlled by the Republicans. With Obama we’ve seen the damage caused when just the House is controlled by Republicans so you can image the problems that Clinton faced in trying to get change. The Republicans caused the deregulation and policies that sent jobs overseas and allowed the banks to give loans to people who couldn’t afford them and as such caused the housing crash. To say that the President is making things worse by prosecuting those Hedge Fund and Ponzi Scheme Wall Street people and others for their part in having our economy falter is ridiculous. On January 24 it was reported that five of the largest mortgage lenders have agreed to overhaul their industry and they may have to pay up to $25 billion to settle with the federal government. In January the Federal Reserve promised to keep interest rates near zero until 2014 and our stock market rose to its highest level in 8 months.
The next thing Governor Daniels went on to say was - The federal government spends one of every 4 dollars in the entire economy; it borrows 1 of every 3 dollars it spends. No nation, no entity large or small, public or private can thrive or survive intact with debts as huge as ours. The President’s grand experiment in trickled down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery. He seemed sincere in believing that we can build a middle class with government jobs paid for with borrowed money; in fact it works the other way – a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class and those who hope to join it. Those punished most by the wrong turns of the last 3 years have been those unemployed or under employed, and those so discouraged that they’ve abandoned the search for work altogether. And no one has been more tragically harmed than the young people of this country; the first generation in memory to face a future less promising than their parents did. On January 14 we heard that the President was seeking power from Congress to merge redundant agencies and thus reduce government spending. Obviously this power was not given to him by the time of the State of the Union Address. And, we must remember that Republicans increased the size of government and unemployment was at its highest when Reagan was in office and they are the ones that caused the explosion in our debt. (Earlier I gave you the information that the gross debt quadrupled during the Reagan and Bush era; Reagan raised the debt limit 18 times and George W. Bush raised the limit 7 times.)
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