Breaking down Obama’s Speech to Congress

 

 

As most people know, I do not watch too many politicians’ speeches.  They will always tell you what they think you want to hear or what they need to say to get their agenda through.  But I do from time to time read through the transcripts and pick them apart.  I thought I would take the opportunity to show you this using Obama’s recent speech to Congress.

The most interesting thing about this speech he made is that his message of hope is back after a month of fear mongering.  Just a month ago he told the American people that if Congress does not pass his spending bill right away, we will never recover from this crisis.  This is a tactic that liberals accused Bush of just before the election.  Obama knew that he needed it done quickly, not to fix the economy, but to jumpstart his progressive agenda that he could not afford to do otherwise.  He was in fact following the advice of his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, who said this past November to “never let a crisis go to waste”.

A second thing I noticed was throughout the speech he talked about the crisis that he has inherited.  He mentioned this again and again.  This despite the fact that he was a Congressman and the fact that liberal philosophy got us into this mess in the first place.  We now have a leader who will shift the blame elsewhere.

But now to his words themselves.

“A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future.”

He is referring to Bush changing highest tax bracket from 39.6% to 35% and the lowering of capital gains taxes. Liberals tend to believe that a middle class person paying 15% and an upper-class person paying 35% is still somehow unfair to the poorer person.  The simple fact is they want more of your money so they can create government programs to give it to others at their discretion.  Conservatives believe that people should keep more of their money (regardless of class) and the government middle man should be left out.

You must also be careful when you hear a progressive talk about investments. Sometimes they are talking about true investments but most of the time they consider things such as Social Security, Universal Healthcare and other government programs as investments.  ie. The Community Reinvestment Act in 1977.

“Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.”

This is another difference in philosophy.  Liberals like government regulation of the private sector and conservatives do not.  What we did recently was not regulate them and then bail them out when they made bad decisions.  That is a bad combination.  And for the record, Robert Rubin and his protégé Lawrence Summers (who was appointed by Obama to his economic team) was responsible for deregulating the banks under Clinton.  Geithner, who Obama appointed as Treasury Secretary, was the New York Fed Chief had oversight of these banks and Wall Street.  He watched the under capitalization of our banks and did not say or do anything about it.

“People bought homes they knew they couldn’t afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway.”

I am glad he acknowledged that the people who bought these homes are responsible for their actions, but that begs to question why he has promised to bail these people out.  This is exactly what his housing plan intends to do.  And he intends to do it with our tax dollars.  He has also made a career pushing these bad loan policies through organizations such as ACORN.  If you look at the failed housing policies in Chicago; that is what he wants to bring to the country.

“In fact, a failure to act would have worsened our long-term deficit by assuring weak economic growth for years.”

The Congressional Budget Office stated that the spending bill Congress and Obama passed will do more long term damage to GDP growth than if they did nothing at all.  The bill would help somewhat in the short term, but would do long term damage.

“Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs.”

Economists have conceded that there is no way they can accurately predict if this many jobs will be created.  There is a wide range of estimates, some as low as 1.2 million.  There is also no way to determine if these jobs were created from the stimulus or if they would have been created anyways due to economic cycles.

“Because of this plan, 95 percent of working households in America will receive a tax cut”

They were in the form of refundable tax credits so you do not have to pay taxes to get them.  The additional money comes out to about 13 dollars a week.  Most people can save more than that by driving 60 on the highway.

“It’s a plan that won’t help speculators or that neighbor down the street who bought a house he could never hope to afford, but it will help millions of Americans who are struggling with declining home values”

That is exactly what his plan will do.  There is no way to weed out these loans from the others as pointed out by the WSJ.  Declining home values are not the problem.  The problem is that people bought homes they could not afford because of lax laws on credit ratings and teaser variable rates.  His plan puts these teaser rates back into effect as it only encourages banks to lower these rates for 5 years.  After which the rates can be raised again.

“But while the cost of action will be great, I can assure you that the cost of inaction will be far greater, for it could result in an economy that sputters along for not months or years, but perhaps a decade. That would be worse for our deficit, worse for business, worse for you, and worse for the next generation.”

Nothing more than fear mongering.  Actions such as the ones he has taken prolonged the great depression.  It did not shorten it.  History has shown wthl less government interaction, the economy recovers quickly. ie. Reagan.  The big government programs put into place during this time period are now a burden on our generation.  Expanding these programs and creating new programs will only place more burden on future generations.

“I will not send — I will not spend a single penny for the purpose of rewarding a single Wall Street executive, but I will do whatever it takes to help the small business that can’t pay its workers, or the family that has saved and still can’t get a mortgage.”

He has already bailed out these people and stated that more money will be needed.  By bailing people out he has rewarded poor decisions and given the government more control the people.  As I mentioned before, less regulation by the government is a good thing, but at the same time you cannot reward bad decisions.  In addition, the spending bill they passed did little to nothing for small business.  Bottom line, it was a welfare bill.

“he only way this century will be another American century is if we confront at last the price of our dependence on oil and the high cost of health care; the schools that aren’t preparing our children and the mountain of debt they stand to inherit. That is our responsibility.”

Their plans do not rid our dependence on foreign oil.  Schools cannot prepare kids that do not wish to be prepared.  The mountain of debt was just increased by a trillion dollars.  It is the people’s responsibility, not the governments.  Big government is not the answer.

“Speaking of our auto industry, everyone recognizes that years of bad decision-making and a global recession have pushed our automakers to the brink. We should not, and will not, protect them from their own bad practices.”

That is exactly what he did.  Little puzzled here.  He has bailed out the auto industry and backed the unions that have caused many of these problems for the big 3.  Why has he not come out and criticized the Union bosses who make the big bonuses off their deals just as CEOs do.  I think you know the answer to that question.

“And I believe the nation that invented the automobile cannot walk away from it.”

I know it’s an insignificant point, but the automobile was invented in Germany

“When it was days old, this Congress passed a law to provide and protect health insurance for 11 million American children whose parents work full-time. (Applause.) Our recovery plan will invest in electronic health records and new technology that will reduce errors, bring down costs, ensure privacy, and save lives.”

They did quietly passed a law subsidizing healthcare for children with our tax dollars, specifically those of you who smoke.  The electronic health records will be red tape for the government to check on doctors to ensure they are doing the procedures that government bureaucrats believe should be done.  If these doctors do not, they will charge them with fees and fines.  Both of these are initial steps to socialize healthcare.  Because as John Edwards wife said last year, the American people are not smart enough to know whats best for them.  And yes, she actually said that and she did work on Obama’s team for healthcare.

“Now, I’m proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks”

This is just a flat out lie.  AP writers tore this one apart already so I will not get too much into it.  Everyone knows it was full of liberal pet projects and expanded numerous government programs.  In addition, Pelosi’s 481 Billion budget proposal for the rest of this year includes thousands of pet projects totaling at least 8 Billion.

“But we have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.”

Most of this saved money is based on the Iraq war coming to a close, which was determined by the Bush administration.  He had absolutely nothing to do with it.  With this recent spending spree this is not likely.  It is interesting to note that before this speech he was pretty adamant that he would not be able to reduce the deficit.

“We will restore a sense of fairness and balance to our tax code by finally ending the tax breaks for corporations that ship our jobs overseas.”

Jobs are shipped overseas because of our government regulations and our corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the world.  You do not promote growth by trying to intimidate corporations… they will just leave altogether.  If you make it economical to do business here, then they will.

“In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans.”

Our government’s debt problem is not because we are not taking enough money from the people.  The problem is government spending.  Our government’s socialist programs are actually the biggest burden that we have. They were not designed to be long term solutions.  They were not designed to be retirement accounts.  But that is what the government has turned them into and as long as they exist in their current state, we will continue to have problems with our budget.

“Now, to preserve our long-term fiscal health, we must also address the growing costs in Medicare and Social Security.”

Once again these are problems that were created during the New Deal that our generations are now paying for.  Instead of getting rid of these programs and giving the money back to the people, they want to expand them and push the problem to future generations.  Take for example Obama’s plan to tax higher amounts of income for social security.  Yes, it will provide more money now, but what happens when those people retire.  Now you owe them more as well.  Eventually it will turn into a pure socialistic program where the wealthy pay into it, but do not receive anything when they retire.  That is probably about the time when they decide to leave the country.  Bar Room Economics anyone.

“Along with our outstanding national security team, I’m now carefully reviewing our policies in both wars, and I will soon announce a way forward in Iraq that leaves Iraq to its people and responsibly ends this war.”

This has already been done.  The plan developed during the Bush administration to train Iraqi security forces and slowly turn power over to the Iraqis is working and the timeline and plan to exit Iraq has already been developed.  I said before that he will try to take credit for it and now it looks like he is laying the groundwork to do just that.

“Because I will not allow terrorists to plot against the American people from safe havens halfway around the world. We will not allow it.”

But he would have let them do it in Iraq and if in charge in 2007, he would have pulled our troops out leaving Iraq in disarray with a major power gap giving terrorists a safe haven to train and plan attacks.  After bashing Bush for 8 years, this just disgusts me.

“And to keep our sacred trust with those who serve, we will raise their pay, and give our veterans the expanded health care and benefits that they have earned.”

Everyone applauds our soldiers, but he should not try to take credit for something that is already under control.  Soldiers get cost of living raises each year and also raises based upon rank promotion and time in service.  Healthcare is already paid for by the government to include items such as laser eye surgery.

“And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and will seek swift and certain justice for captured terrorists. (Applause.) Because living our values doesn’t make us weaker, it makes us safer and it makes us stronger. (Applause.) And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture.

They made the decision to close Guantanamo before they did an assessment (as he did in Iraq) and before they knew what they were going to do with the terrorists there.  That is still in limbo. A recent report has also shown that this facility is humane and meets international standards. He also gave an order to stop all interrogating techniques used by the Bush administration.  They are now re-thinking their position on this order after a CIA report revealed to his administration the types of information being gained from these techniques.

I hope my rambling has not put anyone to sleep, but it is important to wade through all the mess thrown at us in well performed speeches.  We need to look at his actions and not his words.  Facts and details and not vague ideas.  The recent government spending was hopefully a wakeup call to many Americans who had been mesmerized by our new President.  People must realize the decisions Obama is making now to increase our government are going to have to be paid for by future generations.

Tagged as: Obama