Bill Black on the SOTU
There are many ways to view the State of the Union address, and perhaps each listener needs to assess how much importance to give to the issues offered for comment. Most of us are not ‘one issue’ deal breaker sorts of people, but the impulse is strong for those issues we care about personally. How does one sort that out in public? (update: here is a link to the transcript of the prepared speech)
Bill Black has comment on the SOTU speech last night that underscores the probable nature of proposals that will address issues from A to Z, but stresses the fundamental paradox of smaller government intervention which seems to underlie the speech, costing ‘not another dime’ and a ‘balanced approach’ to program proposals:
1) on infrastructure re-building but not much on who will pay for it,
2) emphasizing education but in the frame of tackling rising tuition rates but with less money federally and no acknowledgement that increases are partly due to the loss of state based subsidies,
3) entitlement reform being definitely on the table due to the aging population meme, but without any notion that privately based rate of spending increases on health insurance make private insurance coverage a hot potato for businesses, and the mysterious need to keep Social Security on the table (Bill has a different take on the payroll tax than I support),
4) and of course the knotty problem of mortgage and financial regulation and accountability seems to be missing:
( a raise in the minimum wage, climate change agenda of some kind is on, and dramatically some sort of increased regulation for some guns and ammo were not mentioned by Mr. Black)
“…but stresses the fundamental paradox of smaller government intervention which seems to underlie the speech, costing ‘not another dime’ and a ‘balanced approach’ to program proposals:”
That’s generally called double talk and that is not a reference to the rapidity of speech.
yves calls obama on that minimum wage pledge; in 2008, he pledged to raise it to $9.50 by 2011…
Obama Retrades Broken First Term Campaign Minimum Wage Promise in State of the Union Address
Digby notes a CNN talking head wanted to know where the money is going to come from for the minimum wage hike.
It’s just too funny.
Becker
taxes, of course.
Not sure why Obama spreads what appears to not be true.
– “The elderly (age 65 and over) made up around 13 percent of the U.S. population in 2002, but they consumed 36 percent of total U.S. personal health care expenses.” USDHS
While the elderly do consume an inordinate amount of healthcare, they are not the major cost.
Bill H
wish you would expand on that.
i don’t know if “the elderly consume an inordinate amount”…
i do know the best way for them to pay for what they do consume is to pay their “expected costs” while they are still young and healthy and have jobs. like, you know, Medicare.
it is insane to cut medicare, leaving the elderly to scramble to pay for needs they could have paid for almost without noticing by a payroll deduction over forty years…
all in the name of “easing the tax burden on the young”?
give me a break. the young will become the old.
if we want to ease the tax burden… we need to spend less (not nothing) on “defense” and giveaways to the bankers.
how much do you suppose the current recession is costing “the young”?