Obama’s re-election campaign released a preview of his State of the Union address, which indicates that Tuesday night’s speech will be delivered from deep in the trenches of Class Warfare: “We can go in two directions. One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for where I think we need to go: building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few."
As Charlotte pointed out, the State of the Union address will be nothing more than a political event for Obama, where he'll blame Congress & "the rich" for the nation's ills. The fact of the matter is that the economy is not working for anyone (save for those crony capitalists getting stimulus funds who just happen to be Obama campaign donors).
No matter how smoothly and eloquently President Obama can read the words off of his teleprompter tomorrow night, the American people don’t need Obama to tell them the true state of our country:
- Only 24% of Americans in a recent Rasmussen survey said that the country was heading in the right direction. A Gallup poll indicates that almost half of US adults say their financial well-being is worse now than it was in 2010.
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Since President Obama came into office, our country has endured a net loss of 1.6 million jobs.
- Though the official unemployment rate fell to 8.5% in December, this number is deceptive. Though unemployment numbers dropped by 226,000, 85% of that number consists of 194,000 people last who month gave up looking for work or are out of unemployment benefits, and therefore are no longer counted in official unemployment calculations.
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The real unemployment rate is around 11.4% percent (not counting the underemployed).
- The Bureau of Labor and Statistics estimates there are 2.5 million discouraged workers: people able and willing to work in the US that are not counted in their labor statistics because they had not searched for employment in the previous 4 weeks.
- 72% of Americans are worried about inflation. The Consumer Price Index increased 3.0% over 2011. Retail grocery prices rose 4.8% in 2011, and the current average price per gallon of gasoline is $3.35. These goods are not included in the Consumer Price Index. Expect gas prices to continue to rise, since Obama’s EPA shut down the Hovensa oil refinery in the US Virgin Islands.
- In 3 years since his inauguration, President Obama has increased the national debt by 43%, adding over $5 trillion to our debt oblications. Our national debt is now $15.2 trillion, but set to rise to $16.4 trillion. Our national Gross Doomestic Product is $14.58 trillion (note too that Real GDP (inflation adjusted) has gone through its sixth year of zero growth)
- According to the Heritage Institute, the Obama administration has imposed over 75 new major regulations costing the US economy over $38 billion each year.
- Over half of Americans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), Obama’s signature legislation.
- Over 46.2 million Americans—almost 14% of the population–now receive food stamps,an increase of almost 32% since Obama took office.
- There are so many federal criminal laws, the Wall Street Journal reports that academics and government officials alike have stopped trying to count them. Estimates of the number of federal regulations range from 10,000-30,000, and “none of the legal groups who have studied the code have a firm number”
But the state of our Union doesn’t look all that bad from the windows of the White House, especially when:
- Michelle Obama spent over $10 million in taxpayer money on 42 days of vacation, travelling to luxurious get-aways and staying in five star hotels. Note that this total does not include the First Family’s $4 million dollar, 17 day trip to Hawaii at Christmas.
- Neither our country’s fiscal woes nor the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have hindered Obama’s golf game. Since 2009, the President has played 1,620 holes of golf (according to the Romney campaign).