SOTU
I read the transcript of Obama's State of the Union after missing the chance to watch it live last night. Two of my favorite passages were Obama's criticisms of the Citizens United case
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. I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.
and the Clintonian failure that is DADT,
My administration has a civil rights division that is once again prosecuting civil rights violations and employment discrimination. We finally strengthened our laws to protect against crimes driven by hate. This year, I will work with Congress and our military to finally repeal the law that denies gay Americans the right to serve the country they love because of who they are. It's the right thing to do.
but most media attention seems to be focused on his simple statements of fact about the abyss into which we were staring at this time last year.
One year ago, I took office amid two wars, an economy rocked by a severe recession, a financial system on the verge of collapse and a government deeply in debt. Experts from across the political spectrum warned that if we did not act, we might face a second depression. So we acted -- immediately and aggressively. And one year later, the worst of the storm has passed. But the devastation remains. [...]We can't afford another so-called economic ''expansion'' like the one from the last decade -- what some call the ''lost decade'' -- where jobs grew more slowly than during any prior expansion, where the income of the average American household declined while the cost of health care and tuition reached record highs, where prosperity was built on a housing bubble and financial speculation.
Obama, against all expectations, managed to make Republicans sit on their hands when he discussed tax cuts--something that they haven't done for quite some time:
...we extended or increased unemployment benefits for more than 18 million Americans, made health insurance 65 percent cheaper for families who get their coverage through COBRA and passed 25 different tax cuts.Now, let me repeat: We cut taxes. We cut taxes for 95 percent of working families. We cut taxes for small businesses. We cut taxes for first-time homebuyers. We cut taxes for parents trying to care for their children. We cut taxes for 8 million Americans paying for college.
The facts were just as one-sided when he talked about the spending side of the equation, saying "let me start the discussion of government spending by setting the record straight:"
At the beginning of the last decade, the year 2000, America had a budget surplus of over $200 billion. By the time I took office, we had a one-year deficit of over $1 trillion and projected deficits of $8 trillion over the next decade. Most of this was the result of not paying for two wars, two tax cuts and an expensive prescription drug program. On top of that, the effects of the recession put a $3 trillion hole in our budget. All this was before I walked in the door. [...]Now, even after paying for what we spent on my watch, we'll still face the massive deficit we had when I took office. [...] From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument -- that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is that's what we did for eight years. That's what helped us into this crisis. It's what helped lead to these deficits. We can't do it again.
Former Bush spinmeister Karl Rove complained that "I think it makes you look weak" for a president to discuss the mess left by his predecessor, but ThinkProgress wondered what Rove thought of this line:
To understand the State of the Union, we must look not only at where we are and where we're going but where we've been. The situation at this time last year was truly ominous. [...] First, we must understand what's happening at the moment to the economy. Our current problems are not the product of the recovery program that's only just now getting under way, as some would have you believe; they are the inheritance of decades of tax and tax, and spend and spend.
Oops! That wasn't Obama complaining about Dubya, it was Saint Ronnie Reagan whining about Carter in 1981. It should be pointed out that Democrats wouldn't have to collect taxes if Republicans weren't still stuck in the rut of Reagan's borrow-and-waste tactics from the Eighties. Can anyone seriously believe--despite the past three decades of evidence--that Dems are spendthrifts and Repubs are fiscally responsible?
Speaking of facts, FactCheck's analysis has plenty of support for its summarization that "while we found Obama strained the facts or cited uncertain statistics at times, we uncovered nothing we could show to be false." (There were no unseemly outbursts from the floor, so at least the GOP can claim to be doing something better than last year.)