State of the Union Speech Comments

On Tuesday night, President Obama gave his last speech for this term in the traditional State of the Union address, which is actually a report on what has been done and what the president wishes to see happen.

Chris Edwards wrote at National Review the following “job” package is full of bad ideas:

• A temporary payroll tax cut. This is not a tax cut at all because the president would “pay for it” with tax hikes later on. And if it’s temporary, it won’t encourage businesses to hire additional workers anyway.
• More federal infrastructure.  When the federal government spends on infrastructure, it often misallocates the funds. The list of federal infrastructure boondoggles and cost overruns is endless — in public housing, dam-building, Corps of Engineers projects, bridges to nowhere, high-speed rail, etc. Instead, what we need is higher-quality infrastructure spending financed and built by the private sector. We need private airports, private air-traffic control, and private toll highways.
• A federal infrastructure bank. Such a financial scheme would reduce transparency in federal spending, which would go directly against a key Obama promise of increased budget transparency.
• Federal jobs training programs. Since the 1960s, federal jobs-training programs simply haven’t worked.
• New business tax credits. New tax credits for hiring will distort business decision making and, by making the tax code more complicated, such credits would encourage more tax cheating. They would be the exact sort of tax loophole that Obama claims to hate.
• Crony capitalism. When Obama talks about “government and business working side-by-side,” it sounds to me like an invitation to corruption.
• Extending unemployment insurance. Such subsidies would help keep the unemployment rate high.

Rather than all this big-government micromanagement, federal policymakers should pursue a large and clean corporate tax rate cut.

President Obama can present a good speech and he can gain enthusiasm from his audience; however, talking about it and doing it are two different sides of the coin.

As Mr. Edwards wrote: ...”I'll believe that when I see it.”

How opportune for Mr. Obama to come up with ideas that should have already been implemented during the last three years; and how ironic that in the election year he is talking about working together between political party and the Congress with the White House. Like Mitt Romney, it seems he will say anything to remain in office or be elected for a second term.