Did you catch the State of the Nation address Tuesday night? Almost four months after winning the election, President Obama served up yet another mellifluous campaign speech in which he stated that we’ve been living beyond our means for far too long. Now we are about to enter an era of fiscal responsibility and austerity. And the President believes that the best way to face this new reality is to spend trillions of dollars that we don’t have in order to loosen credit and subsidize home ownership.
Someone more jaded than I might observe that years of loose monetary policy conducted by the Fed, combined with various government attempts to put every man, woman, and child into a three-bedroom split level regardless of income or credit history were the very things that got us into this mess in the first place. But keep in mind that President Obama isn’t content merely to magnify or expand upon past mistakes. He’s also planning massive spending increases in all the classic Democrat pet projects – government education, socialized medicine, and alternatives to sources of energy. Oops, I meant alternative energy sources.
And if you’re worried about the long-term consequences of all this spending, don’t be. Obama is going to fund the whole thing by giving 95% of working families a tax cut, while at the same time making sure that our children don’t inherit debt they can’t afford. He even said the check was in the mail.
So please, put aside your usual cynicism. Have you ever considered the possibility that massive spending increases coupled with tax decreases and no long-term debt only sounds too good to be true? President Obama has assured us that every penny of the trillions of dollars spewing out of the Fed’s printing press will be spent wisely. No fraud or waste will be tolerated in an Obama administration. And to prove it, the White House recently called members of Congress to attend a “Fiscal Responsibility Summit.” (If I’m not mistaken, next week Madonna is hosting a seminar on the “Joys of Celibacy.” Bill Clinton is the keynote speaker.)
Sure, there may have been a few things in the President’s address that could have gone better. No doubt he regrets claiming the automobile was invented in the United States – that one may follow him around like Al Gore’s claim to have invented the internet. And I could have sworn I heard even Nancy Pelosi chuckle when Obama said he didn’t believe in bigger government. One can only suspend one’s disbelief so far, I suppose.
And although it will go almost wholly unremarked upon, one of the biggest applause lines of the night came when the President mentioned the trillion-dollar deficit that he inherited. I assume the applause came from Democrats taking the opportunity to cheer a parting shot at the Bush administration. Far be it from me to defend the previous administration’s horrific record, or that of Congressional Republicans over the same period, but I did note that the very Democrats who were cheering were complicit in the reckless spending of the past eight years and are almost wholly responsible for the reckless spending of the past eight weeks. They might want to tone down the kettle-calling for a while, just in case.
But these are all minor points in the grand scheme of things. What’s probably most important to the Obama administration is that the news outlets bought the whole spiel. Indeed, they’ve barely been able to contain their glee. And on Thursday the White House will unveil its almost $3.7 trillion dollar budget, which is almost 20% larger than last year’s. This will sail through Congress with neither hitch nor hiccup.
So all in all, I’d have to say it was a pretty amazing State of the Nation speech. God, what I would give to hear a State of the Republic speech instead!
