Obama’s First Address to Congress Unimpressive

Last night, Barack Obama delivered his first address to Congress. Overall, the speech was little more than mediocre. It was delivered like an ordinary politician, complete with the feeling of a strict teleprompter reading and frequent stumbling over words. There was also very much blame and antagonism toward his political opponents and the previous administration, which makes Obama’s rhetoric claiming that he wants an era of “bipartisanship” seem quite insincere.

Taken as a whole, the message was quite revealing. Obama’s immediate plans for economic recovery and a general transformation of the United States involve an unprecedented expansion of the federal government. In order to set up his agenda, blame for our current economic problems was laid squarely on George W. Bush and Republicans, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy, and the three areas of reform that Obama proposed in his speech – healthcare, energy, and education.

Basically, what we heard last night was the same rhetoric we’ve been hearing since the beginning of the last election cycle. There was no new message – except for the fact that our federal government will attempt to cut one of its deficits…by spending more money?

The first of the three areas of focus in the speech was energy. After citing how much better China’s efforts were at developing “clean” energy, Obama decided to mention his plan to implement a carbon tax. Of course it was not called a “carbon tax” in his speech because that would make him appear to be hypocritical since he has claimed he would not raise taxes on anyone in our hard economic times. Instead, he asked for a “market-based cap on carbon pollution.” This has been the dream of the redistributionist eco-Marxists for many years.

Obama said we must be leaders in the green movement and announced what most people had already known about his funding plans for energy sources promoted through the hysteria of global warming propaganda – $15 billion per year towards developing green energy. I suppose this will help decrease our deficits over the next ten years.

Next up in his speech was healthcare. Obama said he has already chosen people to begin working on healthcare reform and that they will start working on it this week. He didn’t get into specifics, which may or may not be a good thing.

However, he did claim that a new healthcare-related bankruptcy is filed every 30 seconds, which sounded a little off when he uttered the figure. After some calculations and checks on bankruptcy numbers, it appears that the figure just isn’t accurate. According to Obama’s claim, the total number of bankruptcies caused by healthcare bills alone would exceed 1,050,000 every year. But from July 2007 to July 2008, the total number of all bankruptcies filed was less than 970,000. I understand he’s trying to sell government-run healthcare and I don’t want to nit-pick figures, but the fearmongering based on overblown statistics is a tactic that has become very loathsome in recent years.

Mr. Obama, try to think of a new way to sell your socialized medicine. Lies and scare tactics were supposed to be left in the old era of politics, remember?

The third leg of his expansionist agenda was government education. Obama said that dropping out of high school is “no longer an option.” What exactly he means by that is unknown. Will there be punishment if anyone chooses not to finish high school? That will apparently be determined at a later date.

More important than his plan to eradicate drop out rates was the notion that the federal government will provide education for every single child from birth to college. Universal government education from pre-school to law school doesn’t sound like a well-thought out plan considering the abject failures in the system as it is today. And if schools are currently short on funding, how much more money will be required to set up a system of universal cradle-to-college education? Wasn’t cutting deficits supposed to be one of the focal points of this speech?

In a surprising twist, Obama admitted that the “stimulus” bill he signed last week actually did contain legislation that would jump-start some of his programs in all three of the previously mentioned areas. This was something that many Democrats had been denying and claiming was right-wing demagoguery. It appears that those denials were lies – or honest mistakes, considering that no Congressman read the final bill before signing it.

What was supposed to be stimulus for the economy was also groundwork for expansive government, which will certainly contribute to our exponentially increasing national deficit.

Not to worry though, because Obama plans on slashing the deficit by cutting defense spending. But this presents a bit of a problem in several ways. First of all, Obama said in his speech that he plans to expand military personnel and increase pay and benefits. He is also sending more troops to Afghanistan as part of a strategy that has yet to be decided. How you reconcile increasing the size, pay, and benefits of the military and increase forces on a war front, while simultaneously cutting spending, is quite a challenge.

One of Obama’s mentioned solutions involved getting rid of “Cold War era” programs. We’ll have to wait and see what exactly will fall under that category. Hopefully he’s not referring to gutting intelligence capabilities like we experienced during the Clinton administration.

Another brilliant plan to cut the deficit was to allow taxes to expire on “wealthy Americans.” Again, this is something that had been mentioned since Obama’s early days on the presidential campaign trail. Anyone making over $250,000 per year will not see their taxes increase “a single dime.” But of course, by the time the tax cuts expire at the end of next year, our money will be worthless – so practically everyone will be making more than that amount.

After all the domestic proposals were announced and the deficit-cutting pledges were made, Obama decided to briefly venture into the realm of foreign policy, the military, and Guantanamo Bay. At this point, “insolence” does not begin to explain what transpired. In order to comprehend the brass of leftist politicians you must first understand that they mostly loathe the military. And in recent years, our Democrat congressmen have served up prime examples of that exact attitude. That being understood, Obama had the following to say to our military personnel:

“We honor your service; we are inspired by your sacrifice; and you have our unyielding support.”

Now that doesn’t tell the whole story about this portion of his speech. Here’s the part that really grates on nerves:

“To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend, because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. 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, because living our values doesn’t make us weaker – it makes us safer, and it makes us stronger.

“And that is why I can stand here tonight and say without exception or equivocation that the United States of America does not torture. We can make that commitment here tonight.”

Again – after multiple investigations and inspections by various agencies and organizations that all came to the conclusion that prisoners at Guantanamo were treated extremely well – Obama implies that our military tortures its prisoners. To my knowledge, Obama has never visited the detention facilities himself and it is a well-known fact that the prisoners at the facility are actually the ones abusing the guards.

But the truth has no place in Democrat circles and leftist crowds who apparently see nothing except fascist baby-killers when they look at our military.

Obama went on to say that we have entered “a new era of engagement” and that we “cannot shun the negotiating table nor ignore the foes or forces that could do us harm.”

I don’t believe we have been ignoring our enemies and I don’t recall the previous administration “shunning” the negotiating table. I do recall that it was not up to our enemies to call the shots and that we did not engage those who refused to acknowledge fundamental concepts – such as the fact that terrorism cannot and will not be tolerated and that Israel has a right to exist. When these self-evident truths are rejected, then there is no point for engagement. It’s not comforting to hear that Obama is willing to look past something so basic.

All in all, the performance and the substance of the speech was nothing special. At the end, we heard a couple of stories about a banker and a student. The story about Leonard Abess, the bank CEO out of Miami who gave away his $60 million bonus to his employees, was a great example of the charitable nature of American citizens – and it didn’t require the government to interfere in any way.

The story about the student from South Carolina, Ty’Sheoma Bethea, whose school is literally falling apart, was a perfect example of the inadequacies of the government education system – something Obama wants to expand.

These two accounts demonstrate the vast differences between private and government management of our lives. It was probably the best part of Obama’s speech and presented one of the finest arguments against government expansion. Unfortunately, not many people will be able to make that inference on their own.

After all was said and done at the Capitol, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal presented the Republican response to Obama’s address. The delivery was a bit hokey, but the message was a very distinct contrast to the statist policies set forth by Obama. Jindal’s message was consistent with the proper role of government in a capitalist and republican system. Now we can only wait and see if Republicans can once again become the opposition Party with strong ideals and actually adhere to the small-government principles that they espouse.

Tuesday night was an historic one, but if it wasn’t for the role that race will play when assessing this day for the history books, the speech by Obama was very forgettable – unless, of course, you are a staunch opponent of massive government. If that’s the case, then I have a feeling this night will be remembered for all the wrong reasons. It may end up being the night when the blueprints for our country’s imminent collapse was laid out for all to see.