Happy Wednesday folks,
Last night’s State Of The Union speech by President Barack Obama with full of “missed opportunities,” As Joe Scarborough said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” this morning. The speech was lofty in rhetoric, full of liberal goals, but short on policy specifics that will help move the country forward. Scarborough noted that, “this is a guy who’s playing more to his base more than trying to figure out how to make Washington work.”
During the speech Obama gave lip service to the prospect of major reforms to the nation’s biggest problems, acknowledging that, “Yes, the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare, must embrace the need for modest reforms.” However, the quick reference to “modest reforms” doesn’t really cut it. Obama fails to illustrate any policy specifics on how to tackle the problem, nor does he provide a sense of urgency to solving it (even though it was a goal of his in his first term).
It is disappointing that he didn’t spell out how Medicare spending is currently out of control, because currently, there is a $38 trillion liability on the program. That liability is roughly two and a half times the size of the entire U.S. economy! Additionally, the program is predicted by the Medicare trustees to go into the red in only 11 years! For Social Security (a topic which Obama largely ignored), it’s only 20 years!
These issues could have been a major highlight in his speech. Think of it now…a rallying cry of that nature could have brought members of Congress from either side of the aisle together to sing “kumbaya.” Instead, feverish calls to a liberal agenda were repeated by Obama.
Seize the day,
Mark Bednar
@MarkBednar
Important Things On Tap For Today
10:00 AM: Senate Hearing On Jack Lew’s Nomination To Be Secretary Of Treasury
11:35 AM: President Obama Tours North Carolina Lunimar Facility
1:30 PM: HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Makes PPACA Announcement With Gov. Pat Quinn
Tweet Tweet
@Brendan_Buck “Was the president laughing at the mention of his own jobs plan? Think he was. Think he was.”
@Dylan_Byers “Biden and Boehner are like the black & white comedy and drama masks.”
@MkRaju “Reid just let out a yawn”
@MorningMoneyBen “Lots of things for liberals to love in the speech that won’t become law. Immigration reform maybe.”
@SportsCenter “Felix Hernandez and the @Mariners have agreed to a lucrative extension. A source tells @Buster_ESPN that it’s for 7 yrs/$175 million.”
President Obama’s SOTU Issue Matrix
2012
1: Al-Qaeda
2: Manufacturing
3: Trade
4: College Costs
5: Energy
6: Regulation Reform
7: Financial Regulation
8: Tax Increases
9: Toxicity In Washington
10: Afghanistan/Iran-Israel
2013
1: Deficit/Sequestration
2: Medicare
3: Tax Reform
4:Jobs/Manufacturing
5: Climate Change/Energy
6: Education
7: Minimum Wage
8: Afghanistan/Iran-Israel
9: Voting Reform
10: Gun Violence
On The Radar
Economic Growth
Texas And California Spar Over Jobs And Taxes. “Texas Governor Rick Perry’s latest sales pitch to California businesses boils down to four words: Texas is no California. ‘Building a business is tough. But I hear building a business in California is next to impossible,’ Perry says in a cheeky radio ad that aired ahead of his tour of the Golden State this week. ‘See why our low taxes, sensible regulations and fair legal system are just the thing to get your business moving to Texas.’”
North Carolina Lawmakers To Slash Unemployment Help. “North Carolina lawmakers Tuesday moved to drastically slash jobless benefits, joining the ranks of states that have decided they can no longer sustain the growing financial burden of the unemployed.”
Mr. Lew, What Will You Do About Dodd-Frank “Mr. Lew, after the recession ended in June 2009, the U.S. gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 2.5 percent until July 2010, when the president signed the Dodd-Frank Act into law. Since then, the annual rate of G.D.P. growth has been 2 percent or less. The reasons for this are not hard to find. Dodd-Frank is the harshest regulatory law ever imposed on any industry. To be operational, it requires almost 400 new regulations.”
Immigration
Senators To Introduce New Startup-Visas Bill. “Foreign-born entrepreneurs and foreign university graduates with advanced degrees in highly sought technical subjects now have a bill of their own — again. On Wednesday, Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) are introducing Startup Act 3.0, a renamed version of a bill they introduced last year. It would create new visas for up to 75,000 foreign-born entrepreneurs and 50,000 foreign graduates of U.S. universities with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.”
Health Care
The Current Medicare Debate Will Not Solve The Program’s Problems. “Reforming Medicare requires applying the same sort of sophisticated data analytics, care models, incentives, and behavioral science that some of the efforts from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), as well as the best private sector health plans, are applying today. The future of Medicare is fundamentally about changing behavior and outcomes — the behavior of medical technology firms (drugs, device, diagnostics, etc.), providers, and patients, and then by extension improving health outcomes. This is a much more complex undertaking than anything ever contemplated in Social Security, and if policymakers want to get serious they need to move beyond simply talking about “cutting entitlements” and actually move to talking about making them smarter.”
$2 Billion Medicaid Program Helps Mostly Illegal Immigrants. “During the debate over the 2010 federal health care overhaul, Democrats promised that illegal immigrants wouldn’t be among the 27 million people who’d gain coverage. President Barack Obama repeated that pledge last month when he outlined his immigration plan. But while federal law generally bars illegal immigrants from being covered by Medicaid, a little-known part of the state-federal health insurance program for the poor pays about $2 billion a year for emergency treatment for a group of patients who, according to hospitals, mostly comprise illegal immigrants.”
X-Factor
Iraq Sets First Kuwait Flights Since 1990 Invasion. “Iraq’s state airline will resume flights to Kuwait this week for the first time since former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded the Gulf oil state in 1990, Kuwait said on Tuesday, in a sign of improved bilateral ties.”
This & That
The Internet Is Unusually Lukewarm About Michelle Obama’s Dress
Nationals Racing Presidents Headed To Mount Rushmore
Steve Martin A First-Time Dad At 67