It’s not hard to predict the notes President Obama will hit when he delivers his fifth State of the Union address on Tuesday. The president will call for more “investment” in pet priorities like alternative energy; he’ll insist on some form of “nation-building at home”; he’ll demand higher taxes from Americans; and so forth. You know the drill.
What you probably won’t hear is a clear plan for restraining federal spending to reduce deficits and the debt — even though recent polls show American taxpayers are deeply concerned about Washington spending.
In January, the highly respected Pew Research Center polled Americans about their top public policy concerns. Seventy-two percent said they wanted to see action on “reducing the budget deficit” (it was third on the list after “fix the economy” and “create jobs”).
Yet while the public grows increasingly anxious about government spending, President Obama has failed to offer clear leadership to bring down the trillion-dollar deficit and to bring the $16.4 trillion national debt under control.
One thing the president probably won’t boast about in his State of the Union address is how the national debt has ballooned by more than 50 percent since he took office. Unfortunately, the policies President Obama has pursued have left the economy gasping and wheezing.
Though the recession officially ended in June 2009, signs of recovery remain scarce. In the final quarter of 2012, the U.S. economy actually posted negative growth; meanwhile, the 7.9 percent unemployment rate is slightly higher than it was the day the president was inaugurated in January 2009. It’s unlikely the president will note these facts on Tuesday.
Granted, President Obama took office under unusual circumstances, with the nation in the midst of a deep recession. But he promised at the beginning of his term that the “emergency” measures he was taking would spark robust economic growth, drive down unemployment below 6 percent and cut the deficit in half. He delivered on none of those promises — yet he continues to spend with reckless abandon.
If you’re at all concerned about defense and our national security, then the nation’s fiscal picture should alarm you. It’s certainly alarming to Admiral Mike Mullen, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has for the last three years warned that “the most significant threat to our national security is our debt.”
The president is no doubt aware of this fact, but he hasn’t been willing to focus on what’s needed to turn the tide on the federal government’s river of red ink. Instead, he calls for higher taxes on “the rich,” although he is certainly aware of the mathematical fact that there simply aren’t enough “rich” taxpayers to put a dent in a $16.4 trillion mountain of debt.
He has been aggressive at cutting defense spending (with more steep cuts slated to take effect in March under “sequestration”), but has offered no plan for getting the nation’s runaway entitlement spending under control. This in spite of the fact that President Obama promised in 2009 to tackle entitlement reform in his first term. In the ensuing years, the fiscal picture for Social Security and Medicare has only grown worse — yet the president quietly abandoned efforts to reform those bloated programs.
The benefits of restraining federal spending would be numerous. Restoring some semblance of sanity to the federal budget would send a clear signal of stability to the business community and world markets, which would ease the uncertainty that weighs on the economy.
Restraining runaway growth in Social Security and Medicare would ensure that these overburdened programs will be able to provide benefits to future generations of taxpayers.
And reducing the threat of debt would ensure that the U.S. is able to continue meeting its obligations as the world’s guarantor of peace, security and freedom. But is the president prepared to take on such a mighty challenge? Based on his past performance, I’m not reassured.
President Obama has a lamentable tendency to approach every major speech occasion as if it were another campaign appearance. Witness his second inaugural address last month, in which he referred to the deficit only once, in passing, before going on to talk about further spending. One expects he’ll take a similar approach in his 2013 State of the Union address.
What a missed opportunity that will be. If the president really wants to rise above the current political impasse, it’s time to lead by tackling our spending problem. Sending a clear message Tuesday about how he intends to do that would be a good first step.
Pete Hegseth is the CEO of Concerned Veterans for America, and the former executive director of Vets for Freedom. Pete is an infantry officer in the Army National Guard, and has served tours in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay.