Before moving to my next issue blog, I have to respond to President Obama’s speech.
Tuesday night the American people experienced the time-honored tradition of the Presidential State of the Union address. What President Obama delivered was something different than what we have come to expect from the leader of the free world. This address sounded more like a campaign speech and ignored many important issues of the day. Perhaps, what is most noteworthy is what the President left out, not his new campaign promises.
In his appeal to voters, President Obama forgot to mention that we have witnessed a deficit that has more than doubled since he took office, and that we are experiencing the longest period of sustained high unemployment since the Great Depression. With more Americans in poverty than ever before in our nation’s history, this Administration has proved itself a complete and utter failure.
Our Middle class, always the backbone of our nation’s economy, is suffering from 35 straight months of unemployment above 8 percent under the failed promises of this Administration. Our gas prices have doubled and the promise of new jobs for American workers remains a pipedream.
The President just one week ago stopped the XL pipeline, an economically and environmentally sound project that would have gone a long way toward providing energy independence and providing American workers a decent private sector paycheck. The progressive policies of this Administration are not only failing to fix the economy, it is traveling down a path that requires us to borrow one of every three dollars the government needs to maintain it.
Washington, literally, spends 25% of the money spent in our economy. What President Obama is not recognizing is that government on steroids is not what the people of this great nation want, and are demanding, of our officials. The President pays lip service to the common sense policies that would enable prosperity and freedom to reign in America.
Last night President Obama said that he believed as Abraham Lincoln did that government should do for the people only what they cannot do better by themselves, and no more.
Yet over the last three years has thrown the Constitution out the window by appointing czars, ignoring court orders, pushing through excessive regulations on businesses that reduce the American workers’ ability to compete overseas, and, for the first time in our history, stealing wealth from future generations of Americans not yet born.
The President admitted last night: “There is no question that some regulations are outdated, unnecessary, or too costly.” In fact, he said, “I’ve approved fewer regulations in the first three years of my presidency than my Republican predecessor did in his.”
While the number is 4.7% fewer in quantity, the truth is that this President created over 75 new major regulations that cost American businesses jobs. The average annual cost to businesses is higher than under his predecessors, with the increase estimated by some to total as much as $1.75 Trillion annually. This represents twice the amount of individual income tax collected last year. This is the Obama Administration’s legacy – the imposition of $38 billion in new regulatory costs on American taxpayers, more than any comparable period of time on record. We can do better by ourselves. We, the American people, don’t need this type of assistance from Washington.
It sounds good when President Obama speaks of restoring the economy and giving everyone a fair shot. I agree, too, that everyone should do their fair share and play by the same set of rules. But what this Administration has failed to acknowledge is that under the U.S. Constitution, the guiding document that has brought us freedom, liberty and centuries of prosperity; we the American people are provided an equal opportunity to succeed, not a guarantee of equal result.
When the President stated that he bet “most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year, or next year, or maybe even the year after that, because Washington is broken.” I bet he was right. When he offered an explanation that “The greatest blow to confidence in our economy last year didn’t come from events beyond our control,” once again he was correct.
The events of the last three years of his presidency were controllable. The President is responsible for the ongoing deconstruction of America and for worsening the economic problems we face today. President Obama has failed to deliver on his campaign promises, and he has failed the American people who trusted him to bring change in the last election.
Daria Novak with Bob Turner
