President Obama spoke with sincere words of change during his first State of the Union address on Jan. 27. After a year of losing touch with his voters and disappointing the nation with unfulfilled promises, President Obama finally broke the silence and focused on jobs and the economy, two matters that citizens can relate to best.
“One year later, the worst of the storm has passed. But the devastation remains,” the president said. “Jobs must be our focus in 2010.”
Although some of these statements might sound like sheer derivatives of empty phrases the president used during his campaign, the State of the Union Address was different in that after describing the problems of 2009, he offered possible solutions to a full economic recovery.
President Obama joked about the bank bailout, saying, “I hated it. You hated it. It was about as popular as a root canal.”
The bailout may have been unpopular, the president explained, but it was necessary and potentially saved the United States from falling deeper into a financial crisis. President Obama then announced one idea after another to lower unemployment rates and improve the economy.
Perhaps the most noteworthy was his plan to recycle the $30 billion of collected TARP money and reinvest in small businesses across the nation.
“If these firms can afford to hand out big bonuses again, they can afford a modest fee to pay back the taxpayers who rescued them in their time of need,” the president said.
In doing so, he plans to extend credit to more than 1 million businesses across the nation with the hope of giving them enough stability to generate more income and in turn, raise wages and hire new workers.
President Obama also stated that the only way to ensure our future prosperity is education. He announced the need to “revitalize our community colleges, which are a career pathway to the children of so many working families.”
Obama noted that the recent spike of college tuition is wrong. In the president’s own words, “In the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”
This statement led to his proposal that would allow 1 million students to pay only 10 percent of their income on college loans. If they were unable to pay their loans within a time frame of 20 years, the debts would be forgiven. If they chose a career in public service, their debts would be forgiven after 10 years.
The president’s new agenda is like the breath of fresh hope that the administration failed to provide the citizens this past year. His plans sound wonderful to someone who has been hearing only the negative aspects since the economic crash two years ago. Let’s examine the series of great ideas.
The president first supports a government-sponsored rescue of private banks on Wall Street using tax money. Then he initiates a plan toward universal health-care—once again sponsored by you. Then, he slips in a statement supporting something like universal education. And finally, he proposes to fix the economy by re-infusing taxpayers’ money, to save the businesses they shop at daily on Main Street.
Some may ask, where is the sense in working hard for your money, if it’s being redistributed to everyone else in our society, even if it is to save the economy? Today the excuse is to save the economy—tomorrow the excuse will be, “because we did it yesterday.”
So essentially, this thinking goes, the businesses could initially have never paid their workers, because the workers are now paying the businesses. The government collected taxes from small businesses to save the big banks on Wall Street. With universal health care, the government really gets to ensure that everyone has equal treatment.
So, small businesses are going to have the same treatment as big businesses, workers get to have equal treatment as CEOs, everyone gets equal health-care, and college tuition will be pardoned. One word comes to mind: socialism.
But President Obama’s ideas are alluring. They sound fantastic, because they are fantastic—to a capitalist society. A capitalist nation, such as America, is founded on the motive that if you can find a way to make money, you will live comfortably; if you cannot figure out a way to generate income, then you are out of the race for the American dream.
By recycling money and distributing it to those in need, as well as providing everyone with equal access to resources—ahem, socialism—then we are no longer chipping away at the nation’s economic problems, but at the pillars upon which capitalism is founded.
This does not mean that the president is hiding some secret plan to transform the United States into a socialist society. Neither does it mean that his ideas should be outright rejected and put on the back burner. President Obama’s plans may be the key to restoring the United States at the lead of the global economy, where he naturally sees it. The President said it himself: “I do not accept second place for the United States of America.”
What this does mean is that the citizens of the United States should be more scrupulous when analyzing the government’s decisions. Zoom out and examine the scope of the administration’s plans, don’t just pay attention to the benefits of each newly proposed idea.
Despite the president’s call for teamwork among the parties, the Republicans, who are capitalist fanatics, will fight to the death any “Marxist” idea that enters the Senate or the House. Nevertheless, Americans must not be ignorant and rely on the judgement of our politicians. President Obama’s proposals simply touch on Marxist notions of equal treatment for all. The nation should be aware of the presence of these concepts, rather than agreeing with any idea that comes their way.
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