First, I'm extremely glad that this man is our president. Whether you agree or disagree with "his" policies, you have to admire his maturity, his pragmatism, his calm, his historical and legal knowledge, and the passion that only comes with fighting to the top (vs. silver spoon syndrome).
Secondly, after watching who applauded when, it only became clearer to me why I'm no longer a Republican. Of course the main Republican I was able to watch during the speech was John Boehner since he and Joe Biden were in the camera shot of the president the entire time. Let's take a look at a passage that really impressed me...
"...now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in. That is not sustainable. Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.
[...]
Now, most of the cuts and savings I’ve proposed only address annual domestic spending, which represents a little more than 12 percent of our budget. To make further progress, we have to stop pretending that cutting this kind of spending alone will be enough. It won’t. (Applause.)"
What struck me is that if you transplanted that speech back in time and gave it to Reagan, Nixon, or Eisenhower, you'd see Republicans cheering. Here you have a Democratic president acknowledging that cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and defense spending will have to be taken if we're serious about tackling the deficit. But what did Republicans do? Lackluster applause. When Obama said that their rich buddies would have to give up their tax breaks? Zero applause from the right. Cuz, ya know, they care deeply about this out of control spending and soaring deficit caused in great part while they rubber stamped W's policies for a decade, but let's not get crazy ok? Let's not take away a tax break from those who made money from all these Americans who they're screwing now. If this is trickle down economics, then there must be a large bucket of something above our heads before it starts "trickling". How many billions is enough? Even my beloved company Apple pisses me off in this department. Here's one of the most cash rich companies in the world and they're still making their expensive, premium devices in virtual slave labor countries where the employees of these companies can't even afford to buy one of the iPods they assemble. All in the name of maximizing profits. All at the expense of American jobs. The CEO must maximize their shareholders' returns or face the axe. Even if doing so means chopping down America's middle class in the process.
If you follow this reasoning to its natural conclusion, it's not really promising for anyone. If the American middle class evaporates, who's going to buy all the gizmos that these CEO's companies make? It certainly won't be the residents of these poor third-world countries. So are these CEOs Americans first or Capitalists first? And are these elected politicians who sit in the People's House who enable these wealthy people to continue their schemes Americans first or Capitalists first? You decide.
It seems to me that our president appears to be one of the only adults in the room. The only one willing to see the problem for what it is, see the solutions for what they are, and push to implement them. The conservatives often hold Reagan up as a model Republican. I find it curious how similar Obama's ideas are to Reagan's in his "A Time to Choose" speech. The real FISCAL conservatives (Reagan included) would have applauded the fiscal responsibility that Obama showed during this speech. At minimum, they would have applauded this so-called "socialist" for discussing ideas like cutting entitlement programs. Anything less is not fiscal conservativism at all. It's fraudulent pandering to the people who fund their campaigns. The same people who benefit from the tax breaks, contract awards, and loopholes quietly placed into our complicated tax code by these same politicians. If you don't see all this clearly, you really need to take a closer look. I'd strongly suggest this book. If you see it and still support these people, I'm afraid you're the butt of their jokes on the golf course.
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