While the spirit of non-partisanship was refreshing, the State of the Union was quite disappointing.
Facing the 112th Congress, President Obama made his State of the Union Speech. The occasion is quite unique, because the seating arrangement in the House of Representatives is not divided by partisan party-line but integrated in the spirit of national unity after the shooting in Tuscan, Arizona.
Except for several issues, President Obama stressed on topics that all of Congress can in principle agree with regardless of party politics. The speech avoided areas that were divisive while giving heavy weight attention on the economy and jobs.
My final impression of the speech was disappointing. I felt that several policies were incompatible with each other.
The President called for fiscal responsibility, yet many of his other policies called for some type of government commitment to new potential programs. Granted, he did give some examples on how the government is going to get additional revenues, but I do not believe that would be sufficient to reduce the federal deficit and provide funding for new programs at the same time.
In fact, the President has admitted in his speech that he himself will have to make cuts to programs that he cares most, and he also proposes a spending freeze for the federal government. Meaning, he seems to be proposing an impossible option where committing one policy (spending cuts) prevents the other policy from enacting (additional funding for infrastructure). The speech might sound awesome only if these seemingly contradicting elements are shielded from the listener’s consciousness.
Also, there were certain policies that just didn’t make sense. What does he really mean by high speed wireless internet access? In all honesty, if he wants a rural farmer to access such network, as he mentions in his speech, then the cost to the farmer from accessing such public resources should be low. But look at the data plans for all these wireless companies. They are quite expensive! It will take a lot of government money to subsidize the cost in order to make these high speed wireless networks to be truly accessible for all. This, again, seems to contradict his other policy on reducing federal debt and cutting spending due to the high cost of government subsidies. Besides, what is a high speed wireless internet access? 3G? 4G? The vagueness tells me that this policy is purely vaporware.
Finally, I was quite troubled when he jokingly said that there will be no pat-downs when traveling by rail. Pat-downs are a security procedure to prevent anybody from bringing a banned item to another area (e.g. airplanes). Does he seriously imply that there will be no government security checks on railways to prevent somebody from bringing a dangerous item to our national infrastructure? That is ridiculous.
The pat-down comment was probably used as a device to push greater public and congressional support for government funding in the national railway projects. The fact that he had to push his rail funding policy through this type of rhetorical strategy brings the question of integrity to either our pat-down procedures or the railway funding project.
Overall, I hope we are in a better state of the union when the President makes his next State of the Union address.
