If you missed President Obamaâs State of the Union address last night, you didnât miss much â especially if you watched any of his past four State of the Union addresses.
We heard the same recycled rhetoric, and we heard his Orwellian declaration that the cornucopia of new federal programs he proposed, as well as his intention to eradicate world poverty, wouldnât âincrease our deficit by a single dime.â
Of course, he glossed over the inconvenient facts. He boasted about job creation, but didnât mention that real unemployment is higher today than when he took office. He touted all those still undiscovered âclean energyâ jobs without mentioning the tens of thousands of real jobs the Keystone Pipeline will create if he would simply allow it to be built. He sang of new energy development, but didnât mention that new offshore leases for oil and natural gas drilling have declined a decimating 61% under his administration.
He talked about âhelpingâ to build âa thriving middle class,â but didnât address how the middle class is actually faring under his economic stewardship. This is important â his deception must be addressed: under his leadership, middle class families have seen the average price per gallon of gas increase 96%, the average cost of family health care premiums rise 24%, the annual cost per household from federal regulations rise to over $15,000, and real median household income decline $4,520. If this is what happens when he âhelpsâ the middle class, then please, Mr. President, we implore you to stop âhelpingâ us.
He talked about a âbalanced approach to deficit reductionâ without mentioning that $5.9 trillion has already been added to the debt since he took office. Weâre $16.5 trillion in debt and he keeps digging the hole deeper! He didnât mention his record trillion dollar deficits or the fact that his last proposed budget would add $9.2 trillion to the debt through 2022. His Democrat-controlled Senate hasnât passed a budget in four years. Thatâs obviously not âresponsibleâ or âbalanced.â He said, âWe canât cut our way to prosperity.â Well, we definitely canât get there by borrowing and spending money we donât have on his âinvestmentsâ that donât work. If indiscriminately borrowing and spending money led to prosperity, then bankruptcy would be a sign of economic strength. But it isnât.
A State of the Union address should give us a true picture of the direction in which we are headed. But we didnât get the truth last night. And it WAS Orwellian.
What is the true state of our union? Though this may sound harsh, Iâll speak the truth here. We are a country going bankrupt to fund a bloated, distant, and often corrupt federal government led by venal politicians more concerned with paying off their campaign cronies and consolidating their own power than in preserving the constitutional republic that so many have fought and died for (including our brave men and women in uniform who were barely mentioned last night).
We are a country with an economy being stifled under the weight of a bankrupt and voracious federal machine demanding more taxes and burdensome regulations. Job creators are the ones stuck with the bill when Obama calls for ânew revenue.â Their businesses bear the brunt of the nearly 87 million paperwork hours imposed by federal regulations in 2012 â annually costing them $1.75 trillion. And I havenât even mentioned Obamacare yet, which looms like the dark cloud it is over our private sector. Is it any wonder why our economy is stagnant or why job growth is so anemic? President Obamaâs âsolutionâ to these problems is to make the federal government more intrusive, bankrupt, and controlling.
If we continue down the path Barack Obama has us on, the long-term forecast of the state of our union is not a pretty picture. Yet he merrily rolls along it, deceiving too many Americans into thinking that these are intelligent, economic, and ethical proposals.
Our President wasnât candid with Americans about our forecast, but, interestingly, in a Q&A session last week, Paul Krugman, one of President Obamaâs economic cheerleaders at the New York Times, was remarkably candid about where weâre headed.
When asked about our federal debt, he admitted that âeventually we do have a problemâ especially because âthe population is getting olderâ and âhealth care costs are rising.â So, what does he see as the solution to pay for all this? He admits that your taxes will rise. And worse:
âSurely in the end it will require some middle class taxes as well. We wonât be able to pay for the kind of government the society will want without some increase in taxes, not a huge one, but some increase in taxes on the middle class, maybe a value added tax. And weâre also going to have to make decisions about health care â not pay for health care that has no demonstrated medical benefits. So, the snarky version I use, which I shouldnât even say because it gets me in trouble, is death panels and sales taxes is how we do this.â (But wait, I thought thereâd be no such thing as âdeath panels,â liberal liars?)
Mr. Krugman tried to portray this brave new world in the gentlest possible light, but itâs going to take quite a lot of âsales taxesâ to meet the payments on the ever-increasing multi-trillion dollar debt weâre burying our kids and grandkids under. And with health care costs rising under Obamacare, obviously a lot of care will be rationed and even flat out denied by panels of faceless bureaucrats making life and death decisions for you and your loved ones. This is the long-term forecast for the state of America under Obamaâs failed policies: middle class taxes and death panels.
Does that sound good to you? It doesnât to me. So, we better get motivated to do something about it. Weâd better get out of our post-election funk and wake up to the radicalsâ reality being created as America gets âfundamentally transformed.â
Hereâs the good news: President Obama is in many ways a lame duck president. None of his ridiculous ideas will come to pass via the legislative process. Of course, he may try to force them down Americaâs throat by imposing them through other means. But they can be undone if the right people are in position to undo them. He is very bold right now â some would say cocky â because of his November win, but there is another election around the corner, and we can check his boldness at the ballot box by electing constitutional conservatives. We must continue to affirm the fact that growing our bankrupt federal government is NOT the solution. Most of what the federal government does could be handled better on the individual, local, and state levels.
Our country didnât weather a Revolution, two World Wars, a Civil War, a Great Depression, and countless other political and economic storms, just to be sunk by the dangerous policies of this current administration. Weâre stronger than this. As President Reagan said, âI do not believe in a fate that will fall on us no matter what we do. I do believe in a fate that will fall on us if we do nothing.â
So, do something. 2014 is just around the corner. Get motivated! Get organized. America, donât retreat. In the words of yet another White House program, âLetâs move.â