Patriot's Response to the State of the Union

He spoke of "hope and change" and cited stories of Americans who have overcome adversity, and rightfully so -- that has been the heritage of the American spirit. To be sure President Obama is a skilled and artful presenter and tonight was no exception.

But beyond the flowery prose I found the substance to be contradictory and insulting to the intelligence of the American People. President Obama acknowledged the great debt our nation is under and the need to reduce our deficit. His plan to rectify that deficit is more of what he has been doing for the last two years, which has amounted to more than 3 Trillion dollars in our deficit, and that is increased spending. Only this time he is not calling for bailouts, or stimulus, it is now called "investment." By any definition what he is telling us is that he plans to spend even more of the American taxpayer's money.

He spoke of encouraging innovation and sparking American Entrepreneurship that was made possible by the free enterprise system. He then offers more investment (spending) to assist those that may not have the money to pay for that innovation and offered that if they come to the government with their ideas he will make it possible for them.

He spoke of investment for education and expansion of his "race to the top" program as a means to incentivize better state education performance. If the state does better it gets more money - money we don't have. But of all the education announcements made tonight one bright shining moment was the plan to repeal "no child left behind" laws; which many of you know has assisted the ruination of our public education system..

There was talk of increased spending; I mean investment, in infrastructure and building more roadways and high speed rail. This sounded very much like the Trans-Texas Corridor of the Bush administration. He spoke of digital infrastructure where information would be available to 98% of all Americans and how medical records are already available to some patients who can access them from their home computers. I have to believe that this new infrastructure could also be used to provide government with data on 98% of Americans as well.

President Obama also hinted at his desire for Amnesty for the children of illegals and the potential for educating them all the way through college as part of our future;again at a cost to the American taxpayer.

According to President Obama things are strong for our Union yet he talked of our Democracy multiple times never once acknowledging our Republic.

He spoke of the new rules he put into place to prevent another financial crises. How quickly we forget our own history. The central bank and the Federal Reserve were put into place to prevent financial crises and we ended up with the great depression - I shudder to think what we have in store for our future.

His plan to offset all this spending, I mean investing, is to freeze the Annual Domestic Spending. He spoke of this "cut" as a necessary step to reduce the deficit. But a freeze is not a cut it is merely staying where you are. If you are driving a car and you are approaching a cliff you don't set the cruise control you hit the brakes.

He talked in generalities about saving Social Security for future generations and then talked of not subjecting future retirees to the "whims of the Stock Market." We heard talks of this the past year of government wanting to nationalize private retirement accounts - well I guess he really means it.

He spoke of the same old rhetoric that every President has uttered during hard times - streamline the government, tighter budgets, control the deficit, and this year he promised to really veto any bills that had earmarks in them. Perhaps saying that in his campaign really didn't count because he wasn't President then - I expect he really means it THIS time.

Finally he spoke of foreign affairs, ending the war in Iraq, and starting troop drawdowns in Afghanistan in July. Actually not a bad idea but we probably ought to not be telling the enemy what we are going to do before we do it.

All in all I think President Obama missed the mark of what the American people have been telling him since he took office. We do not want more government we want less. We do not want more spending we want less. We do not want more taxation we want less. All in all we want to be left alone.

Mr. President, if you are serious about wanting to control government spending and doing the right thing - let's start with this:


Discontinue all programs that do not fall under the powers of Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution - Start with department of Education and Department of Energy and return them to the states
Cut the personal income tax from federal law and institute a national consumption tax and leave the money with the people that earned it.
Remove all American military troops stationed overseas. We can defend and spot on the face of the earth, with pinpoint accuracy, from our war planes, ships, land based missile. We do not need a physical presence there.
Take those returned troops and place them on the border. 90% of all illegal traffic across the border would cease overnight. Your job is to protect our borders - now would be a good time to start.
Phase out Social Security and return that to the rightful party - the individual. Cut off all Social Security withholding from paychecks for anyone above the poverty line and then only on a volunteer basis. Create an actual fund that Congress cannot touch to cover these payments. Within a generation the Social Security deficit would be solved.
Repeal all unconstitutional laws and return control over those items to the states where they rightfully belong - starting with the massive expansion of the interstate commerce clause and intrastate firearms manufacture and sales.
Move the government back toward a policy of sound money and return the responsibility of that currency to Congress by repealing the Federal Reserve Act.

In short Mr. President stop what you are doing and return our Republic back to the sound principles upon which it was founded.