SOTU 2014: What the President Won’t Say

Tonight, President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address to Congress and the American people. He and his advisors have undoubtedly scripted numerous sound bites designed to get standing ovations from the Democrats’ side of the aisle. The President will offer plenty of complaints about Republicans and plenty of excuses about why he has not done a better job. What he is not likely to do is take responsibility for any of his failures, offer a plan to help unemployed Americans by getting our economy back on track, or announce he is finally ready to consider Republican ideas.

Here are some things the President won’t be talking about tonight.

Economy

The economy under President Obama and Democrats has suffered from a lack of good jobs, a discouraged labor force, and little growth. The President won’t talk about his record, because it’s one of the worst economic records of any President.

• Jobs. He won’t mention the U.S. economy added a disappointing 74,000 jobs in December 2013 -- the lowest monthly gain in three years and well below the consensus estimate of 200,000 new jobs.
• Labor Force. The labor force participation rate is 62.8 percent, a decline of 0.2 percent from last month and tied for the lowest level in 35 years. The declining workforce participation rate is worrisome as the longer people are out of work, the worse their odds of finding steady work again. More than 18.7 million people have been out of work for more than six months.
• Real Unemployment. The “real” unemployment rate is 13.1 percent for December 2013, and the “real” number of unemployed Americans is 20.6 million. This includes people who are unemployed (10.4 million), want work but have stopped searching for a job (2.4 million), or are working part time because they can’t find full time employment (7.8 million).
• GDP Growth. He won’t mention that his economic “recovery” has shown tepid growth. At the same point in the recovery from the early 1980s recession (17 quarters following the recession), real GDP had grown by 23.1 percent under President Reagan. Real GDP under President Obama has grown less than half of that, at 10.3 percent. This growth is also lower than the recoveries of the early 1990s and early 2000s recessions. Both of those recoveries saw real GDP increase by more than 14 percent in the same time frame.
• Trade. He won’t talk about any trade agreements he negotiated and brought into force on his watch, because there aren’t any.

Income Inequality

The President will likely talk about opportunity and income inequality. Under his leadership, Americans are taking home less pay, and more are in poverty. This is a record no one could be proud of.

• Minimum Wage. He won’t mention how the nonpartisan CBO has said raising the minimum wage would destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs and that it is a barrier to entry for young people who are facing 19 percent unemployment.
• Declining Household Income. He won’t mention household incomes went from $53,644 to $51,017 (-$2,627) under his watch.
• Increasing Poverty. He won’t mention the poverty rate has increased from 13.2 percent to 15 percent (+6.7 million people) under his watch. There are now 47 million Americans living in poverty.

Budget

The Obama Administration has said that once again it will miss the legal deadline for submitting its budget on February 3. The President is not going to talk about that or the other failures of his past budgets.

• A Late Budget, Every Year. The President won’t mention tonight that this will be the fifth time he’s submitted his budget late. In total, this Administration’s budgets have been 173 days late, far more than past Presidents.
• Highest Deficits Ever. He won’t say that the lowest budget deficit of his presidency -- $680 billion for fiscal year 2013 -- was higher than any deficit ever run during any other President’s time in office.
• Record Debt. He won’t mention that he has added $6.6 trillion to the national debt since entering office, an increase of nearly $21,000 for every man, woman and child in America. With the Administration’s latest request, President Obama has now asked Congress to raise the debt limit seven times.
• No Long-Term Entitlement Proposals. He won’t admit that he has passed up every opportunity to strengthen entitlements in a way that makes them financially viable for the long term. He won’t mention that in 2009 and 2010, when his party controlled both houses of Congress, he didn’t seize the initiative to implement ideas for long-term fiscal stability. Instead he seized the initiative to implement Democratic ideas for short-term fiscal profligacy. 

Energy

Americans want to hear how the federal government will help the private sector create jobs and provide affordable energy, not how it will impose climate change policies that will sacrifice both. Here are a few things President Obama won’t say, but the American people should know.

• Keystone XL Jobs. He won’t talk about the 42,100 jobs his Administration has blocked for more than five years by refusing to make a decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline project.
• Coal Jobs. He won’t mention the more than 200 coal-fired power plants slated to close, the 138 coal-fired power plants that have already shut down, and the more than 250,000 jobs that unions say are put at risk, because of his Administration’s regulations.
• Energy Costs. He won’t admit that his Administration wants to shut down even more coal-fired power plants and prohibit new ones from being built, making electricity less reliable and more expensive, especially for the poorest among us.
• Energy Production. He won’t say that economic benefits from increased oil and gas production are being generated on private and state lands, not federal lands – and only despite his Administration’s policies, not because of them.
• ‘Green’ Energy. He won’t admit that his green energy bets over the past five years have been an abject failure and cost hardworking American taxpayers billions of dollars.

Health Care

Bureaucratic mismanagement, gross incompetence, and calculated deception have come to define the Administration’s disastrous Obamacare rollout, harming Americans all across the country. The President is not likely to tell the American people the truth about how his health care law is hurting Americans.

• Sign-Ups Going Badly. He won’t admit that exchange sign-ups are trending older and sicker. The Administration estimated it needs young adults to comprise at least 39 percent of the Obamacare risk pool, but so far only 24 percent are between the ages of 18 and 34. If this continues, premiums will skyrocket.
• Paid Premiums. He won’t say how many people paid their first month’s premium. The Administration has released numbers of people who have picked an insurance plan, but isn’t saying how many of those people actually finalized their coverage by paying for it.
• Newly Insured. He won’t say how many people are newly insured. The Administration boasts that three million people have gained health insurance coverage through the exchanges due to Obamacare. It hasn’t clarified how many of them are simply renewing coverage or switching from one private insurance plan to another, which would make the small number even less impressive.
• Changes and Delays. He is not going to talk about the 14 laws he signed that amend, rescind, or repeal components of his health care law, or about the five key provisions of the law he has delayed by administrative fiat.

National Security

The President will probably not talk much about national security matters, because it is difficult to see what he would have to brag about.

• Iran. He will not mention how his diplomacy gave in to Iran on the key point of enriching uranium.
• Syria. He will not talk about how he called on Assad to leave Syria more than two years ago. While his Administration is meeting in Switzerland with the Assad regime, the slaughter of more than 130,000 Syrians continues on his watch.
• Benghazi. He won’t talk about his failure to bring to justice the perpetrators of the terrorist attack in Benghazi and the murderers of our ambassador there.
• Guantanamo. He won’t talk about his promise that Guantanamo would be closed in 2010; or how a detainee transferred from there was involved in the Benghazi attack.
• Al Qaeda. He will not mention that al Qaeda is resurgent in Iraq and across the region, having reconquered towns America spent much blood and treasure to secure. It is certainly a far cry from his 2012 campaign claims that “al Qaeda has been decimated,” or that al Qaeda operatives are “scrambling.”
• China. He probably won’t talk about how China continues to expand its influence at our expense. China continues to be the single biggest country that we are indebted to, and now holds the most U.S. government debt it has ever held. China owns more than $1.3 trillion of Treasury securities.

Nominations

The President will not tell Americans how he prefers to bypass their elected representatives to enact an agenda that the American people do not want and Congress will not support.

• Judges. He will not mention that more than twice as many of his judges have been confirmed when compared to predecessor at this point in their second terms. President Obama has had 46 judges confirmed, while at the same point in his second term President Bush had 21 confirmed. 
• Senate Rules. He will not talk about how he supported Senate Democrats in breaking the chamber’s rules in order to get his controversial nominees confirmed.

The President will almost certainly say tonight that the state of our Union is strong. That is true because the American people are strong and resilient. They can overcome the Obama economy -- and the bad policies of this Administration. But the President should at least tell the truth about his policies and how they have failed the country.