The Accomplishment Of The SOTU Address
Reports came in last night that President Obama’s State of the Union address got really high marks. Quick polls from CBS and CNN showed approval ratings of 92% and 88%, respectively. E.J. Dionne explains what Obama accomplished with the speech.
Some speeches hit you over the head with their main points, and absolutely no one could miss the fact that “win the future” was the central theme of President Obama’s State of the Union Address. It was a smart speech aimed at scrambling the political debate, reassuring Americans that we can overcome challenges to our economic power, and redefining the political center.
It was also a bold defense of government’s role in spurring innovation, supporting research, and promoting education. Obama wants the debate to be between practical, efficient, forward-looking government and diminutive, unambitious government. For progressives, that sure beats the big versus small government argument.
Joan Walsh captures the essence of the GOP responses. Both were two sides of the same dishonest coin – whitewashing the GOP’s involvement in creating the debt they now rail against and short on specifics.
The president was lucky to have not one but two GOP rebuttals, and they were equally strange and dishonest. Rep. Paul Ryan railed against the deficit without proposing even one specific cut. He didn’t talk about his own infamous “Roadmap,” maybe because most analysts have called it a budget buster, even though it essentially replaces Social Security and Medicare with vouchers. The Congressional Budget Office estimates Ryan’s plan wouldn’t balance the budget until 2063, and would add $62 trillion to the debt by then. Citizens for Tax Justice said Ryan’s Roadmap raises taxes on 9 out of 10 taxpayers and while slashing them for the wealthiest.
Wisely, Ryan talked about none of that. He promised to repeal “Obamacare” and replace it with “fiscally responsible patient-centered reform,” but didn’t say word one about what it would entail. Most dishonestly, Ryan said Democrats had overspent “to the point where the president is now urging Congress to increase the debt limit,” ignoring the fact that Congress raised it seven times under President Bush. That’s your new chair of the House Budget Committee. (Update: Somehow I missed the best line in Ryan’s rebuttal, in which he worries we’re headed toward “a future in which we will transform our social safety net into a hammock, which lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency.” I want to ask the 14.5 million unemployed Americans, and the millions more who are underemployed, how they’re enjoying their hammocks. Leave it to a Republican to come up with such vivid metaphors of leisure to talk about suffering. It’s the only way they can relate.)
Tea Party leader Michele Bachmann followed Ryan, and CNN chose to broadcast her talk while other networks didn’t. Bachmann has actually proposed budget cuts – eradicating the Department of Education and saving money (?) by repealing the Dodd-Frank Financial Regulation act. But she didn’t talk specifics in her SOTU rebuttal, either. Luckily, she didn’t get into American history, after her disastrous Iowa speech sugarcoating slavery and otherwise distorting the American past. (Note to Bachmann: George Jefferson was definitely not one of the founders.) She flashed Perot-style charts blaming rising unemployment solely on Obama, and ranted about 16,500 new IRS agents supposedly hired to enforce Obamacare (Factcheck.org has already debunked that myth).
Bachmann ended with a shot of soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima (which she mispronounced) and compared it to Americans fighting the debt crisis. “We will proclaim liberty throughout the land,” she concluded. “We the people will never give up.” Unfortunately, she was looking at the wrong camera for the entire speech, so she always seemed to be looking over the viewer’s left shoulder (in my case, at my dog Sadie.) It was a little creepy.
Sadly, we don’t expect anything different from the GOP. Debt is an issue the U.S. will have to deal with at some point, but right now we don’t have two parties willing to govern.
It was unequivocally a flat, dull and trite speech. E.J. Dionne is an Obama cheerleader. I’m surprised that he wasn’t one of the original ‘Journolists.’ He must of been too old for Klein and Co.
Ryan’s ‘response’ was very professional and well-delivered. Bachmann is a classic wannabe; trying to fill the temporary Palin void. Bachman is simply out for herself.
Besides, the fact that the Tea Party Express was behind her ‘speech,’ lends a whole new level to the though of credibility. TPE is as about credible as is MoveOn.org. Anyone who aligns themselves with the TPE are idiots (Christine O’Donnell, of course, rode the TPE train for all it was worth). The TPE damages one’s believability quotient.
tell me what was professional about Ryan’s “do what we say or the end of the world will come” speech. NH, I hope you are over 55 or filthy rich, because if Ryan gets his way, your retirement you have been paying in to will turn into tax cuts for oil companies.
Ryan worked on his delivery but it was still the same crazy underneath. Kind of like when the Joker puts on flesh-colored makeup to pass for a normal citizen.
Call me crazy, but I’ve never looked for excitement in the SOTU speech. If you’re looking for that in a SOTU speech… you might need to reexamine your life.
Liberalism is dead, Ben. It’s tiring to hear the Argument Ad Metum meme. The sky is not falling, so stop with your unfalsifiable rhetoric where you attempt to appeal to one’s insecurity, fear or paranoia. Isn’t that what you just accused Ryan of doing?
Hyperbole is best left for MSNBC’s evening lineup.
It was a simple ‘response’ speech, less than 10 minutes long in an empty room. Outside of being the WH press secretary, there is not one job more unenviable in Washington or in politics than being the person from the opposite party responding to the SOTU speech (whether you’re a D or R).
Obama simply tried to use the ruse of ‘competitiveness’ and falling behind China and India as a reason why we should Triple-Down and spend more. Sputnik? Are you serious? Someone please tell John Favreaux that the U.S., under Obama, has just ended our one and only Space Program.
Hell, that alone should at least piss off at least a minority of bleeding heart liberals. Sputnik? This was nearly the same speech as his 2010 SOTU speech.
It’s very obvious that Obama tried to preempt what Republicans have been talking about for months (out-of-control spending, deficits and our unsustainable debt problem). Obama himself, in numerous speeches since 2007, has talked ‘big’ about addressing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Yet, he’s unwilling to look the American people in the eye and confront our spending/debt crisis.
He can’t have it both ways. Btw, we ALREADY spend more on K-12 education than most industrialized nations in the world. I agree, we’re ‘behind’ in our math and science rigor (STEM teaching). If science technology, engineering and math are so vital to our future success (and I agree that they are), we should pay those who teach these subjects more than other subjects (only if they are high-quality, however). Look at the real world. When one graduates from college, engineering, computer science and science majors each earn more money as a starting salary vis-a-vis liberal arts majors.
Our free market dictates that. If one wants to excel, there are many tracks to do so (graduate school, law school, goverment, entreprenuerialship, etc).
It’s both a supply and demand issue as well as a specialized talent issue. Yes, teachers that don’t teach a (STEM) subject will complain, but so what? It’s our most precious resource we are talking about – our children and future leaders!
It’s very obvious that Obama tried to preempt what Republicans have been talking about for months (out-of-control spending, deficits and our unsustainable debt problem).
This struck me more as a call to the GOP to get specific. Ryan has a specific plan. Too bad he ran away from his signature platform, and that “plan” was the only reason he was placed in the spotlight last night.
No, sadly (and this should of never leaked out), but Gov. Chris Christie was offered the response first, but declined, according to one of his staffers.
I read Ryan’s ‘Roadmap’ early last year. Fairly comprehensive, but most Reps did not outwardly endorse it. It’s merely a roadmap, as its title clearly states.
Anybody that knows anything about politics, especially the economic, spending, tax and revenue part, knows that the ultimate showdown on debt reduction, along with entitlement cuts, will result in painful compromise. It must be done, however.
Our deficit and debt is crowding out REAL investment on higher education, infrastructure and other important programs that keep the U.S. ahead of the rest of the world.
I say, rip the Bandaid off! Make across-the-board cuts so no special interest, lobbyist or other person can’t point fingers and go ballistic over their program.
Be an equal-opportunity cost cutter. Don’t discriminate. Hit em all! Then we can move on as a nation and really start to grow again.
News flash: The US is no longer ahead of the rest of the world by most measures.
News flash: Cutting Social Security should not be on the table. Lifting the cap on earnings taxed would fix that all by itself.
Over the last 30 years the middle class has been forced to tread water while the rich got richer and the very rich got very much richer. Discriminate, my chapped ass. Taxing the rich at Clinton-era levels is not discrimination, nor is brining capital gains in line with earnings. The discrimination at the moment is toward investment, and that investment does not have to be in America.
Your “fair” solution is unfair to everyone but the haves.
no NH, that is exactly what Ryan did. Just keep your head in the sand Newsy.
Newshound, are you including tax increases in that showdown?
In his efforts to cut the deficit, Obama will be fighting his own tax policy. The Bush tax cuts for the rich are now the Obama tax cuts for the rich. The spending cuts will have to be much deeper and more painful because of Obama’s Deal.
In his efforts to create jobs, Obama will be fighting against his own enthusiasm gap, sitting in Congress in the person of a Republican House majority.
Social Security cuts and “medical malpractice reform” – WTF? Can we get a Democratic response please?
ok NH – you just stated: ” It’s merely a roadmap, as its title clearly states.”
So…..does that mean you think we should follow it or not? or do you need a GPS as well
for my entire life I always thought a “roadmap” was a tool one used to get one from point A to point B
whether one takes the shortest route – a straight line, according to my geometry and algebra teachers, or the longer way, a more circuitous route and sometimes, the road less traveled. one WILL arrive at the destination.
if Paul’s idea is merely a “roadmap” following your logic, then we might not get there at all?? Is that what you meant?
its not to be confused with the COnstitution, which is “framework” NOT a rule book
Really, you RWNJ really should concentrate on deductive reasoning and logic and give up the sound-bite rhetoric…Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, wasn’t he?”
Or little girls like me will continue to have you for breakfast.
If eleven-dimensional chess were real, Obama would demand tax increases on the rich until the tax cuts were all clawed back until Obama’s 2008 tax promises were met. His demands could be backed with veto threats, veto-ing anything that didn’t include upper income tax cuts. Or by trading spending cuts for tax increases on the rich dollar for dollar.
Newshound also talked about Ryan’s professional message in which he said “our day of reckoning is around the corner”
where as the President said … we have to change the way our country works to meet the new realities of the world” the GOP and folks like NEwshound want to hunker down and wait for the rapture…. as long as the person predicting the END sounds professional i guess.
I clicked through the Joan Walsh article to this
http://www.salon.com/news/michele_bachmann/index.html?story=/opinion/walsh/politics/2011/01/25/skewering_of_sal_russo
and now I think I might actually have nightmares as a result. If you didn’t read it, you really should. Just when you think things can’t be as bad as they seem…..
On the issue of the debt, entitlements, etc I was smacked across the face (metaphorically speaking of course) recently by something so obviously in need of change that I can’t believe it’s still in existence.
Some of you may have trouble believing what I’m about to say, but believe me, it’s true. You may already know that, when it comes to Social Security benefits, a married person (let’s assume the wife since that is typical and will make this simpler) gets to choose between the benefit she earned on her own or 50% of her husband’s benefit, whichever is greater. This is one of those things I’ve always known but never really thought about. Until a recent conversation.
A very wealthy relative (I mean mega-multi millionaire wealthy) was telling me that he’s going to begin taking Social Security – $2200 a month in his case. Now that is literally like pocket change to this guy, but he worked hard, earned his money all on his own so, okay. Then he casually mentioned that, under spouse benefits, his wife will begin receiving $1100 a month as well. That’s when the reality of that spouse’s benefit hit me. A woman who worked for a total of 2-3 years 4 decades ago and hasn’t earned a dollar since will be receiving more each month in Social Security than many people who worked hard all their lives!
Ask yourself, who in this day and age can afford to have a nonworking spouse? The rich, of course. Now I’m a big proponent of mothers (or fathers) being able to afford to drop out of the work force for many years if they choose to do so while they have young children. But you only need 10 years of work to earn Social Security benefits. You can easily stay home for 20 years or more and still qualify for Social Security benefits based on your earnings.
This spouse’s benefit probably made more sense in a world where maintaining a home was more of a full-time job, but even then a married man could get 150% of what a single man received just because he had a wife. And in today’s world, few people see it this way. The only families I know where a wife without young children doesn’t work outside the home are wealthy families.
This is nuts! Now I would guess that eliminating this benefit wouldn’t save a huge chunk of money (if anyone knows how to track that down, I’d love to hear) but there’s no reason for taxpayers to be footing the bill for this. Not to mention the basic unfairness of it. Wealthy women who don’t work outside the home can receive more in Social Security benefits than their cleaning ladies!
I plan to write to Carper, Coons, and Carney about this.
Um… I guess I’m wealthy. Who knew?
A totally awesome fact-check on the Ryan BS.
Social Security is not a personal annuity – it is an insurance program. People like to talk about getting out of it what they paid in – but that’s not how it works. Your Social Security contributions are for funding current retirees, not your own future. It is not a hard concept but people are very resistant to it.
Paying out Social Security benefits to people who don’t need it is like paying health insurance benefits to people who aren’t sick.
anon, I agree that in some ways it’s like insurance but because it’s a government program, not a commercial enterprise, it can build in elements that wouldn’t fly in the commercial insurance world. For example, with reference to the spouse benefits I discussed above, if you go to buy an annuity from a life insurance company, you would get what you paid for. You wouldn’t get a higher monthly income for the same amount of premium just because you were married.
I also agree that a lot of people don’t realize that it is a ‘pay as you go’ system and that what you paid in is only one of the factors used in determining how much you will get. As far as I know, you won’t find any simple explanation anywhere of how exactly benefits are calculated. I’ve read that it’s based on a number of ‘complicated formulas.’
“Paying out Social Security benefits to people who don’t need it is like paying health insurance benefits to people who aren’t sick.”
This gets into the whole question of means-testing which is an important and controversial subject. But I don’t want the change I mentioned to get confused with that issue. I see the whole spouse benefit question as a different and separate issue.