I made an effort to watch the State of the Union in its entirety this past week. To say the least, I was not impressed. The more I learn about what’s going on, the harder it is for me to stomach what the President says. I find some of what he said to be full of flawed logic, some of it just wasn’t true, and some of it seemed downright tyrannical to me.
As for flawed logic, the President said they’re “working to lift the value of a family’s single largest investment, their home.” My first issue with this statement is that homes aren’t investments. The President has a way of overusing the word “investment,” and this is a good example. You can invest in a company that you think will grow, but you really no more invest in a house than you invest in food you buy to eat: a house is simply a consumer good that you buy or rent. The main issue with this statement though, is that keeping home prices high shouldn’t be a goal (nor should keeping them low be a goal; the market should set prices). In case you missed the whole housing crisis, people were unable to afford their homes, and we’ve seen foreclosures at record rates. Housing prices should be allowed to fall so that they are more affordable. Trying to lift the values of homes unreasonably favors existing owners while making things more difficult on people that are looking to buy homes in the future (college students for example).
Another piece of flawed logic is that we need to impose a tax on big banks to recoup TARP money. TARP money should never have been handed out in the first place, but even though it was, taxing big banks is not the way to get it back. Under the current proposal, banks that never received TARP funds will be taxed, and some banks that did receive it, won’t be. The Constitution outlaws what it calls “ex post facto” laws, meaning laws that are passed after the fact, on prior actions. Imagine if income taxes went up and they were retroactive for the past year, so that you needed to pay up the difference on what you earned last year. That’s unconstitutional, much like a tax to get back at the banks that received TARP money and never mind the fact that many banks who received TARP money were strong-armed into taking it, and never wanted it at all.
The President said the White House has “excluded lobbyists from policy-making jobs or seats on federal boards and commissions.” This statement is either a lie or wordplay. For it to have any real meaning it must include former lobbyists, as nobody would remain a lobbyist while holding a position on the White House’s staff. If that’s what the President means and it isn’t wordplay, then it’s a lie. Eric Holder, the Attorney General, was registered as a lobbyist until 2004. Mark Patterson, who is the chief of staff to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, was registered as a lobbyist for Goldman Sachs up until last year. The list goes on and on.
While the President welcomed suggestions for healthcare reform, he has routinely disregarded valid suggestion, such as eliminating mandates for coverage that people don’t want, tort reform and allowing interstate competition for health insurance. I’m baffled why he hasn’t accepted or at least addressed these points more.
As for what seemed a bit tyrannical to me, the President said “with all due deference to separation of powers, last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limit in our elections.” He then directed Congress to pass another bill that “helps correct some of these problems.” I don’t know what he doesn’t understand about our three branch form of government, but when the Supreme Court strikes a law down, it usually means that law is unconstitutional and that’s the end of it. You don’t just try to circumvent the system by throwing more laws at the Supreme Court until they give up. Calling the Supreme Court out like that during the State of a Union was rather disrespectful and unprofessional too.
File this one under tyrannical: when the President said in regards to bipartisan fiscal commission: “the Senate blocked a bill that would have created this commission. So I’ll issue an executive order that will allow us to go forward, because I refuse to pass this problem on to another generation of Americans.” Hello there Mr. President, but you have no legal authority to force Congress to create a commission. There are, after all, rules on the Presidency that make it an executive branch rather than a monarchy. But to hell with those silly rules I guess.
I thought there was too much managing of and providing vision for our economy, which came across as dictatorial. I hate it when any President gets up in front of the country and essentially tells us how he wants to run it. This is not the President’s job, nor do I want it to be!