We = Big Government; Investments = Stimulus II

President Obama gave his State of the Union speech last night. I woke up to read little more than glowing reviews of it in the Mainstream press. Now that the big mean Republicans are in control of the House the media can go back to fawning over Obama. The President’s speech was full of feel good optimism but at the end of the day he’s proposing more spending that this nation cannot afford.

What struck me most about the President’s speech is that while he’s attempting to appear more moderate he continues to use phrases like ‘we need to.’ The we is always government, the need to is always spend more money.  This nation has a President who truly believes that innovation and prosperity are something that is created in Washington by bureaucrats. There is no better example of Obama’s socialist tendencies than the endless number of times he used the term we last night.

Washington is not what made the United States an economic power. Our nation became an economic power because of the innovations of people like Henry Ford, Carnegie Mellon, the Vanderbilt’s, the Rockefeller’s etc.  Their innovations led to prosperity for everyone in this country. Government didn’t set their companies up, government didn’t create the innovations that created wealth and prosperity for millions. It took hard work in the private sector for our nation to innovate and become prosperous.

Obama doesn’t think that way though. He’s a true believer in the idea that the economy can be run from Washington. He truly believes that bureaucrat ‘experts’ can manage the economy from DC better than the free market can manage the economy. His speech last night proved that once again only this time he’s trying to couch his socialism in the most positive sounding rhetoric possible.

President Obama offered so much new spending last night that he might as well have called it Stimulus II. Instead he called it ‘investments.’ Apparently the American public would hate another Stimulus but if the President calls the same thing an investment folks will support it. I suspect the President has some focus group or polling which shows this. As such, the Republicans have to hammer home that investments equal Stimulus II. Otherwise, they will be woefully defeated in the budget battle coming up.