The Good Part in the State of the Union

If you checked the blog yesterday expecting to see a breakdown of the pseudo State of the Union, I’m sorry I disappointed. Unfortunately I spent most of the last two days on muscle relaxers with either ice or heat on my lower back. Not real conducive to blogging.

I printed the transcript from the speech, which can be found on the White House website, so I actually missed the delivery, which I’m sure was interrupted numerous times by standing ovations from at least half of the assembled lawmakers. Some of which I would say was appropriate. There was one portion of the speech that contained several applause worthy sections.

While discussing education he pointed out that, “In the end, there is no program or policy that can substitute for a mother or father who will attend those parent/teacher conferences, or help with homework after dinner, or turn off the TV, put away the video games, and read to their child.” Excellent point! He was actually on to something!

Then he moved on to budget cuts and mentioned that they were going through the budget line by line “in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs… We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.” While I was excited about this statement, I was a little concerned about which programs had been identified. I would hope that these are not cuts in defense spending, but he followed up with some encouraging remarks indicating that they in part came from cutting some agricultural subsidies, something that is LONG overdue.

He finished up the section by talking about personal savings accounts as part of Social Security reform, and increasing pay and benefits to the military. If that section was the whole speech I would have been thrilled. Unfortunately it was actually a very small portion and only one page of seven that I printed out.

But this was the good part and I want it to be seen on its own, so I’ll comment on the other 85% in my next post.