President's State of the Union Tries to Box in GOP

President Obama gave his State of the Union speech last night to a joint session of Congress, and in it, he tried to frame the coming political debates so as to put the Republicans on the defensive. Now they control the House of Representatives, they will be able to craft bills and pursue policies in ways they could not do in the previous Congress. This speech was a designed to box them in and limit the amount of damage they can do to his agenda. The Republican responses suggest that this round went to the president.

The Republicans want to cut spending, or so they say (ever since Saint Reagan ruled, they have not cut spending, just the taxes to pay for it). Mr. Obama announced a 5-year spending freeze on discretionary domestic spending. The Republicans now must decide what's wrong with that. Is it too little? If they make that argument, they accept his principle and it becomes a matter of size. Is that the wrong place to cut? Then, where do they make their reductions? Thus far, they have only agreed to a roll-back of spending to 2008 levels. Yet, the resolution on achieving that passed yesterday without any details.

On taxes, he signaled that the Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires is going to be an issue. When Medicare and Medicaid suffer cuts, when educational programs are cut, when the military faces cuts, defending an extra Mercedes Benz in every four-car garage is a tough sell. And he sweetened that with a vow to reduce the corporate tax rate by closing loopholes, a crafty move. America has the second highest statutory corporate tax rate in the world, and one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates. Half of US corporations paid no taxes at all last year. He may well confound the GOP's base here by cutting tax rates and increasing taxes paid.

Then, he laid out his argument for the role of government In 1957, the Soviet Union beat America into space by launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. And then a guy named Yuri Gagarin orbited the Earth. NASA was created, billions spent, and Neil Armstrong rather than Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov was first on the moon. The spin-offs included microprocessors, new fabrics, countless jobs. In short, government does basic research better than the private sector because there is no immediate profit in it.

By and large, the president was good, but the speech was hardly a winner. As usual, it was well-delivered, but it had no ringing phrases ("Win the future"? Ick!). Its purpose was not to energize the faithful but to sway the doubtful. At worst, he managed to consolidate his reputation among independents who have taken a new shine to him after his successes in the lame-duck session of Congress last month.

The official Republican response, not a rebuttal, came from Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin who is chairman of the House Budget Committee. His message was simple "the national debt will kill off the American experiment." He was curiously silent about this during the Bush Administration. He has offered a plan to reduce the deficit, numbers which will actually make the deficit worse according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Beyond that, he sang the usual Republican song about limited government. "Limited government also means effective government. When government takes on too many tasks, it usually doesn't do any of them very well." Factually dubious, but the point is that the GOP will keep making this argument in attacking the president's plans.

A further response came from Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann on behalf of the Tea Party Express (not to be confused with the Tea Party Nation Corporation, the Tea Party Patriots, or the Tuesday Tea Party thrown weekly by Mrs. Higginbotham of Pocklington, Humberside just outside of York, England). She spoke to the Tea Party provided camera, for online viewing and so CNN's made her look like she was looking away from the viewer (and CNN was the only network to show her speech). It amounted to "failed stimulus . . . repeal Obamacare . . . genius of founding fathers . . . blither, blither, blither." However, her speech is very significant in that the Tea Party Express felt a need to have its own response, rather than one from an establishment GOP congressman. There is the split that this journal has predicted for years.

© Copyright 2011 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Ubuntu Linux.

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