12 Feb 2013 Black Conservatives React to Obama Address
The national debt is well over $16.5 trillion. There are more than 47 million Americans now on food stamps. North Korea detonated another nuclear bomb yesterday. Close to half of the people who got free “Obamaphones” may not be eligible for the taxpayer-funded perk. Dogs may understand more about human behavior than we ever anticipated!
And what does Barack Obama want to focus on in his State of the Union Address? Increased spending (call it investment). More taxes (call it revenue). Throw in a healthy dose of class warfare to ease this all down the throats of the opposition and the American people. And a hilarious promise we’ve heard before that all this won’t raise the debt by “a single dime.”
It definitely shows that Obama meant it when he told then-Russian president Dmitry Medvedev last year that he felt he would have “more flexibility” to do the stuff he really wants to do after the election. Gone is the president of all America from campaign mode.
Ever wonder what might be on the far-left’s wish list? It’s probably a good bet that most of it was mentioned at one point or another tonight in the President’s address.
Wanting to pretend to be open to other viewpoints, an angry Obama instead ultimately delivered a my-way-or-the-highway message. If Congress won’t do what he wants as far as new environmental regulations, for example, he threatened “executive actions” to get what he wants (like he did after “cap-and-trade” failed to pass muster under the democratic process).
After all, winning by fewer votes than he did in 2008 and an approval rating of just over 50 percent just weeks after his second inauguration is a clear sign of a mandate, right? Right?!
Black conservatives with the National Center’s Project 21 black leadership network found President Obama’s speech appalling in its sheer scope of big government overreach and in its profound disrespect for America’s founding principles.
Project 21 members were hoping for more, but they were left disappointed.
Simple fact checks revealed Obama’s State of the Union Address was more talk grounded in very little fact.
For example, the President claimed ObamaCare is helping to slow the growth of health care costs. Unfortunately, the fact is that ObamaCare is driving up costs and premiums, jeopardizing coverage and making it harder for small businesses to create jobs.
The President also claims he is ready to work with Congress on a serious budget and that Americans expect them to forge compromises. The fact is that Senate liberals haven’t passed a budget in nearly four years. The President’s own budget is also late again. There is no plan among the President and his allies to replace the Obama sequester.
It is surprising for the President to list so many new initiatives. It is inconceivable to create so many programs when you fail to produce a budget or manage the escalating deficit. Frankly, these are simple facts of budgeting and responsibility that even my children would understand.
Obama’s State of the Union Address was ultimately just another wish list – a tad more aggressive to acknowledge his second term. Americans will be disappointed in the next four years while we continue to saddle our children and grandchildren with increasing debt.
Coby Dillard:President Obama tonight delivered an agenda that is largely no different from the failed ones of his first term. It’s hypocritical to say that Americans don’t want a bigger government, and then spend an hour outlining an agenda that will continue to grow government.
The American people are not interested in more universal programs, additional requirements on small business owners and the further erosion of our rights and liberties. They are interested in a government that will finally do the difficult work of reining in entitlement spending, providing a tough but achievable path to citizenship and working to stop the devastating cuts to our military that the President’s allies have long championed.
Proposing lots of new spending through lofty promises and soundbites borrowed from the proposals of his presidential challengers, President Obama attempted to create an atmosphere of bipartisanship and making it appear he was tacking to the middle.
Obama spoke about fixing tons of problems facing America, but I would argue this was one of the most unserious State of the Union Addresses in the modern era of politics. It began with his veiled demagoguery. His speech was filled with platitudes that sadly hearkened back to his first State of the Union Address, when he made far too many promises and delivered on virtually nothing. The speech, especially toward the end, had the feeling of a campaign rally.
Expecting that Obama would seriously address Social Security, Medicare and lay out a clear plan for entitlement reform was apparently too large a task for this second-term president’s State of the Union Address. Instead, he spent far too much time flitting from topic to topic without any real new ideas or interesting proposals.
The President did speak of passing a budget for the first time in four years, but couched it in promises to solve America’s problems with more government. If there’s ever to be a serious discussion on cutting the deficit and reigning in out of control spending, it did not begin tonight.
Whether the President discussed “attracting more jobs to our shores,” “launching three new manufacturing hubs,” or whatever other measures he mentioned to spur job creation, he said absolutely nothing about cutting taxes on small businesses and corporations – the very sector of the economy that’s primarily responsible for creating jobs! Furthermore – at the beginning of his address – he said that under his watch, over six million new jobs were created. Apparently, he forgot to mention that so many of those new jobs are part-time, and with no health benefits because of ObamaCare.
Despite his Ivy League pedigree, President Obama remains woefully ignorant of the basic economic principles of lowering tax rates to create jobs and jumpstart our nation’s economic recovery. Would it be too much to ask to take a lesson from Ronald Reagan, under whose administration over 20 million new jobs – full time and with benefits – were created!
On his desire to play the class warfare card by wanting another raise in the minimum wage, he should know that minimum wage laws have historically been the primary cause of high unemployment among black youth in our nation. Now, the President wants to increase the minimum wage? This just proves the notion of his ignorance of basic economics.
President Obama once again appealed to a “stronger and thriving middle class” while using the middle class as pawns in his quest for government expansion and redistribution based in “social justice.”
It’s evident that the President continues to demonstrate a level of cognitive dissonance in regards to the continuing struggle so many Americans face under his idea of economic revitalization.
His agenda is nothing more than a recapitulation of the same naïve dream to create a government-sponsored utopia – a utopia that is over $16 trillion in debt ($7 trillion of it created under his watch). This utopia is characterized by more “investments,” subsidized “green energy,” an increase of “infrastructure” projects that serve as code for more union jobs, amnesty for illegal immigrants, increased federal minimum wage that may prices low-skilled workers out of the workforce, increased taxation and abridged expression of the Second Amendment.
After hearing the President speak tonight, it should be abundantly clear his goal isn’t the repair of the American economy by reducing unemployment and encouraging businesses to expand and hire. Rather, President Obama diligently intends to implement a profoundly ideological agenda at the expense of the very people he disingenuously claims he desires to help – the middle class.
In his second term, Americans can legitimately expect – without question or confusion – that President Obama will seek to solidify his legacy as the most ideologically “progressive” in American history. He seeks to best both FDR and LBJ in his attempt to morally and politically justify a rugged and manufactured egalitarianism.
What Obama doesn’t understand is that he’s actually creating more inequality by trying to manufacture justice and “equality.”
It’s unbelievable that our President has nothing new to offer this nation but more divisive and bloated ideas on how government should rule and control every sector of our lives.
This president is setting our nation up for mass failure and rapid economic, moral and social decline.
And wearing a green ribbon won’t change the damage that denial towards our moral decay has done to increase of violence across the nation and in fatherless homes in Chicago.