Once upon a time, in a land that now seems far, far away, the State of the Union was just that: the President’s report to Congress on the condition of the country.
From Thomas Jefferson to William Howard Taft, the State of the Union was, as Gene Healy has documented, “a modest, informational affair [where] Presidents sent the written address to Congress, to be read aloud by a clerk.”
That all changed with Woodrow Wilson in 1913, and Presidents from LBJ to Ronald Reagan have added their own flair and ‘Lenny Skutniks,’ while generally increasing the pomp and circumstance associated with the address.
Today, the speech tends to be little more than a laundry list of proposals to spend, irrespective of the country’s finances.
So it should come as no surprise that Tuesday night’s address by President Barack Obama followed this tried-and-true formula. Americans heard a call to extend federal unemployment insurance, a program originally intended to temporarily supplement state programs when it was implemented – back in 2008.
Americans heard praise of Congress for gutting the sequester, just a few moments after praising the deficit reduction that came as a result of that very same sequester.
And, naturally, Americans heard a plea to soldier on with a health insurance law that is leading to higher premiums and suffering from under-enrollment.
But while these and other programs were proposed, talk of how to pay for them was missing. The President’s calls for investment contained few details about who would be doing the investing.
Of course, Americans know the answer.
When Obama took office five years ago, the national debt sat at $10.6 trillion. Democrats at the time criticized – rightly – the profligate spending of the second Bush administration. After all, during Bush’s eight years in office, the national debt climbed by nearly $5 trillion, at the time the largest increase under any President.
And today? Now, the debt is over $17.3 trillion and climbing. That’s a nearly $6.7 trillion increase since Obama took office. While it’s true that some of this spending was set in motion well before 2008, what’s clear from Tuesday night’s speech is that the President doesn’t see the debt as a big enough problem to warrant changing course. As CBS’s Mark Knoller once put it, “Mr. Obama doesn’t mention the National Debt much, though he does want to be seen trying to reduce the annual budget deficit.”
Penny wise, pound foolish.
He’s not the only one. While both sides point fingers, most of the spending that causes our debt is on autopilot, and neither side has yet been willing to do much about it.
In the end, spending more will do little to solve the country’s economic problems, as the last few years have illustrated. Unfortunately, nothing in the Tuesday night’s speech acknowledged this reality. Soaring promises might be appealing, but the fact remains that the country can’t afford them.
Responsibility is not difficult: New spending should be offset by cuts elsewhere in the budget. Even the President has proposed hundreds of billions of cuts during his term in office. And politicians – Obama included – should finally address the “mandatory” spending programs that drive our debt.
Yet with this speech, the nation continues on the same path. In the coming days, many Americans will offer varied support or opposition to the President’s programs, but let’s not forget that what all Americans deserve is an honest plan to pay for them.
