THE FARCE OF THE STATE OF THE UNION

Congress has a constitutional duty to prepare a budget, but hasn’t for more than 1,000 days because the Democrats who control the Senate fear it would embarrass them to put down in black and white how much they plan to spend, and how large a deficit their spending will create.

Democrats plan to shirk their obligation for another year, to give credence to Barack Hussein Obama’s plans to run against a ‘do nothing’ Congress…even though the half of Congress that’s doing nothing is run by Democrats.

Not so long ago, such blatant political maneuvering would have prompted howls of outrage from press and public.  But few in the news media mention it.

If constitutional duties can be shrugged off so easily, may we — since it is merely a tradition — also dispense with the State of the Union address’.

Presidents from Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) through William Howard Taft (1909-13) delivered to Congress in writing what was then known as the Annual Message.  It was chiefly a report on how Executive Branch departments were performing their duties.

To rally support for his legislative agenda, Woodrow Wilson revived the practice of delivering the Annual Message in person.  The politicization of the SOTU accelerated rapidly with the advent of radio and television, and after Lyndon Johnson began the practice of delivering it in prime time. 

With rare exception, SOTUs today are partisan events masquerading as affairs of state.  They consist mostly of two laundry lists: one of the president’s accomplishments; another containing his wish list for the next session of Congress.

SOTUs typically last about an hour, but rarely contain memorable phrases. This year Barack Hussein Obama spoke 7,059 words in 65 minutes, but said less about the state of the union than Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who delivered the Republican response, did in ten.

The 10th longest SOTU ever was noteworthy mostly for what Mr. Obama didn’t say.

*Obamacare has roiled the health care industry, but only 44 of those 7,059 words were devoted to health care reform.

*That was 44 words more than Mr. Obama said about his $823 billion stimulus bill.

*The national debt has risen from $10 trillion to $15.2 trillion during Mr. Obama’s presidency, is now equivalent to the value of all the goods and services produced in a year.  He made no mention of it in the SOTU.

Much of what Mr. Obama did say was fanciful, hypocritical, or false.

*He opened and closed the SOTU with paeans to American military personnel, but neglected to mention his plans to fire nearly 100,000 of them; cut Air Force fighters by half, and reduce the Navy from 300 to 238 ships.

*Through last summer, the Obama administration had imposed 75 major new regulations, with an estimated compliance cost of $38 billion.  Since then, the EPA has issued a rule which could destroy 1.65 million jobs in the coal and electric utility industries, one study indicated.  Obamacare rules are the chief reason they’re not hiring, business leaders say.  New banking regulations may force hundreds of community banks to close.  Yet Mr. Obama claimed in the SOTU he was cutting red tape.   

*’Let’s make sure people who bundle campaign contributions for Congress can’t lobby Congress,’ the president said, after denouncing the ‘corrosive effect’ of money in politics.  He made no mention of the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and loans his administration has given to bundlers for his campaign.

*Mr. Obama has thrown one roadblock after another in the path of the fossil fuels industries, most recently when he cancelled the Keystone XL pipeline.  But in the SOTU he claimed credit for a boom in exploration for oil and natural gas.

Mr. Obama figures he can lie so brazenly because the news media rarely call him on it when he does.  But Americans seem to be catching on.  This SOTU drew just 37.75 million viewers, down from 48 million for his first, 42.8 million last year.

Or maybe Americans just don’t like reruns.  The president used virtually the same lines in this year’s SOTU as he did in his two previous ones.

Barack Hussein Obama has dragged the state of the union address down to unprecedented depths.  Let’s bury it there.  If submitting it in writing was good enough for Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt, that ought to be good enough for future presidents.  

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.