President Obama’s State of the Union speech included all the familiar aspects of his campaign speeches — especially calls for increased taxes and spending –and no information inconvenient to his reelection. Most glaringly, he failed to mention that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and the Senate Democrats have failed to pass a budget for 1000 days, despite their legal obligation to do so.
Obama called for comprehensive immigration reform, praised teachers and unions, talked about “what America has always been about,” talked about spending money on green energy, but he didn’t talk about what the Senate has stopped being about: outlining a budget that allows the American people to see how much money the Democratic Party plans to spend every year.
“Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home,” he suggested. The president called for green energy spending and infrastructure spending, but he didn’t call for the Senate to reveal how much this spending would cost annually.
Obama said that “a simple majority is no longer enough to get anything – even routine business – passed through the Senate,” but a simple majority could pass a budget.
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., explained earlier this year why Reid has refused to pass a budget. “I think there would be just too much risk for the next election,” Manchin said in December. “They don’t want to risk the next election.”
Here are two inconvenient facts: first, “Washington spends, on avg, $6.8 million a minute. [The state of the union speech] was 65 min long. During the speech, the government spent approx $442 million,” Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., tweeted after the speech; and secondly, “debt held by the public represents a burden on today’s economy,” according to a November report from the Government Accountability Office.
