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Responses to State of the Union


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I didn't watch the address - I just cannot listen to BO. I thought it was hilarious, though, that the front page of the newspaper was that BO was urging spending restraint!!!! :saywhat::nuts:

We don't have tv, so I didn't catch the responses by Paul Ryan and Michelle Bachmann. PR actually quoted scripture! :clap: They didn't mince words, but were respectful about it.

PR: http://escapetyranny.com/2011/01/25/paul-ryans-response-to-obamas-sotus/


MB: http://escapetyranny.com/2011/01/25/michele-bachmanns-response-to-obamas-sotus/

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The sotus was in competition with the Buckeye's BB game so, I missed the speech.

However, I thought PR summed up many of my thoughts about the current POTUS admin and senate.

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I didn't watch it either. I can't stand to listen to the way Obama talks or listen to his uppityness or his lies.

Wonderful that since the Repubs are calling for budget freezes Obama now wants to freeze spending, after he and the Dems so greatly increased it, but he wants to freeze it at the levels he raised the to! :icon_rolleyes:

I heard some of Michelle Bachmanns response on the radio this morning. They were commenting that since her response wasn't the official Repub response it was not going to be carried on TV but only on the internet. Then the networks suddenly decided to air her response as well. It's been speculated the liberal media hoped her response would be very different from the official Repub response and that she might say something many people might view as "radical". It doesn't appear the liberal medias gamble paid off.

Truthfully, I don't care for the State of the Union at all anymore. It's really no longer an actual report on the state of the union as called for by the Constitution. Today it's really nothing more than free politcal ad time. The pres always says things are going good under him, sets forth what he wants his agenda to be, blows political smoke around the mirrors, and tries to use this boost his image and gain some backing for doing things his way.

It would be far better for the country if the presidents state of the union were not a media event, was confined to a written report that was required to address only the specifics of the actual state of the union and present no policy plans or political hay.

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I haven't seen it yet. I'll probably read it tonight.

One general comment is that the blame for the deficit lies at the feet of both political parties. In the Clinton years with a Republican House, we came to have a budget surplus. That quickly evaporated in the Bush years as he cut taxes, we had two wars to pay for, and a sluggish economy. The problem continues in the Obama administration. one thing I do give credit to Obama for is being more honest about our budget problems. He at least included war spending in his budgets, being honest and increasing the reported deficit.

The problem is that we do not collect enough taxes, have a sluggish economy, and spend too much. The one thing I wish that Congress would do is enact a war tax to pay for the wars we have been in. This is unprecedented to fight two nearly decade long wars and not have a tax to pay for the wars. If there is one way we could all support our troops, it would be to pay a tax to pay for the wars instead of making our children pay for the wars when they will have their own wars to fight. I feel that by borrowing to pay for the wars and not paying for it now, the American people are really disconected and do not have a vested interest in the war policy. If an amount came out of their paychecks every month to pay for these wars, I am curious to know if the public dialogue would be any different.

At any rate, I hope they can work together to move our economy forward. I am optomistic about the coming years, though I am not opptomistic about our political parties actually working together.

Edited by kindofblue1977
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IF I was interested in what TOTUS had to read I would rather read it myself, I have not enjoyed pOTUS"S reading ability.

I have heard that the have redefined the word investment as meaning more stimulus.

Pray hard we get the President we need and not the one we deserve in 2 years.

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I haven't seen it yet. I'll probably read it tonight.

One general comment is that the blame for the deficit lies at the feet of both political parties. In the Clinton years with a Republican House, we came to have a budget surplus. That quickly evaporated in the Bush years as he cut taxes, we had two wars to pay for, and a sluggish economy. The problem continues in the Obama administration. one thing I do give credit to Obama for is being more honest about our budget problems. He at least included war spending in his budgets, being honest and increasing the reported deficit.

The problem is that we do not collect enough taxes, have a sluggish economy, and spend too much. The one thing I wish that Congress would do is enact a war tax to pay for the wars we have been in. This is unprecedented to fight two nearly decade long wars and not have a tax to pay for the wars. If there is one way we could all support our troops, it would be to pay a tax to pay for the wars instead of making our children pay for the wars when they will have their own wars to fight. I feel that by borrowing to pay for the wars and not paying for it now, the American people are really disconected and do not have a vested interest in the war policy. If an amount came out of their paychecks every month to pay for these wars, I am curious to know if the public dialogue would be any different.

At any rate, I hope they can work together to move our economy forward. I am optomistic about the coming years, though I am not opptomistic about our political parties actually working together.


Actually, the liberal, unconstitutional ideas you put forth here are the main reason this country is in the mess it's in. America has had a long line of presidents and congresses that were all too willing to ignore the Constitution. With the eventual forced assistance of the Supreme Court into this charade, it's been fairly easy for the leadership to move this country continually in a more liberal, unconstitutional direction.

Unless the leadership is willing to once again abide by the Constitution, the country will continue to go downhill. Since neither major politcal Party is willing to do this, we can expect to continue to watch America go downhill.

Thus far, what has been offered up as solutions by the Dems and Repubs amount to little more than a few small bandages and lots of window dressing.

Look back over the course of decades and we see these same battles and issues were going on regardless of who was president and who controlled congress and we can see over the course of those decades that things just continued to get worse until we reached the point we are in today with the leadership still heading us down the wrong road.
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Actually, the liberal, unconstitutional ideas you put forth here are the main reason this country is in the mess it's in. America has had a long line of presidents and congresses that were all too willing to ignore the Constitution. With the eventual forced assistance of the Supreme Court into this charade, it's been fairly easy for the leadership to move this country continually in a more liberal, unconstitutional direction.

Unless the leadership is willing to once again abide by the Constitution, the country will continue to go downhill. Since neither major politcal Party is willing to do this, we can expect to continue to watch America go downhill.

Thus far, what has been offered up as solutions by the Dems and Repubs amount to little more than a few small bandages and lots of window dressing.

Look back over the course of decades and we see these same battles and issues were going on regardless of who was president and who controlled congress and we can see over the course of those decades that things just continued to get worse until we reached the point we are in today with the leadership still heading us down the wrong road.



This country has gotten extraordinarily better over the years. We have a huge history of mistakes. We basically committed genocide with the Indians to make was for our country, we enslaved African Americans to boost profits of farmers, after slavery ended, we continued to force African Americans into poverty by refusing them education, making them feel inferior through segregation, depriving them of good education, etc. This was as little as 50 years ago.

You can talk about the good ole days as much as you want to, but there as as much sin back then as there is now. People are people. It just manifasted itself in different forms. Back then they prayed in schools, but sent all the black children to different water fountains and bathrooms. Society had its problems then, and it has its problems now. If it were not for the Supreme Court, brave members in Congress and a President willing to intervene in "states rights" we may stil live in a segregated society where it was ok to deman people.

I'm not trying to be argumentative, but when people say this country is worse now than it has ever been, I wonder if they have forgotten some of our hisotry. I wonder if they have forgotten slavery and segregation. I wonder if they have forgotten the mass murder of Indians and confining them to small reservations that had infertile land. There have been very good things about our history as well.

Every generation has its good and bad points. Overall, our society has grown and evolved for the better. We still have challenges. But there are more homeowners now than at any time in our nation's hisotry. There are opportunities for black and white people, man and women to work and prosper. There is more wealth in our nation than ever before. Overall, our health is much better and we live longer due to civil engineers that gave us clean water and sewage treatment, and doctors who gave us vaccines and the like. We are a nation free to worship as we see fit. There are so many awesome people in our country that are inspring due to their entreprenuial, chariable, or other endeavors. Our innovtion and technology is amazing. Our interstate system (build by the federal governement that you seek to deamonize) is unbelievable. I can go on and on.

We also have challenges. We have violence in schools. We continue to battle unwanted and teenage pregnancies. We have become obese and unhealthy in our eating habit. We are materialistic. We are greedy. We are depedennt on oil for our way of life. There are many challenges we must overcome. One of which is deficit spending. To fix that, we must cut spending, build an economy and raise taxes. I think both parties want to cut the deficit and have surplus. I don't know anyone who likes spending more than they have. However, the situation is what it is. The parties need to quit crying to their constituents, and sit down at the table together and negotiate a plan to get us out of the situation. I think both parties want to fix the problem, but differ on how to get there. Instead of having an attitude of "my way or the highway," they need to sit down, compromise, and build a plan that everyone can live with and that will work.
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kindofblue1977, I beg of you to open your eyes. Society is going to hell, literally! Abortion is now legal as is supported by tax dollars. Millions are being slaughtered and we are forced to help fund it. Children are now committing mass killing in schools. Homosexuality is now being embraced. Christianity is openly ridiculed. The God of the Bible is being rejected by a larger and larger percentage of the population. Over the airwaves TV shows are broadcasted that promote homosexual acts and under age sex. That is not improvement.

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kindofblue1977, I beg of you to open your eyes. Society is going to hell, literally! Abortion is now legal as is supported by tax dollars. Millions are being slaughtered and we are forced to help fund it. Children are now committing mass killing in schools. Homosexuality is now being embraced. Christianity is openly ridiculed. The God of the Bible is being rejected by a larger and larger percentage of the population. Over the airwaves TV shows are broadcasted that promote homosexual acts and under age sex. That is not improvement.


God's standards are to be the judge and by His standards America has become exceedingly worse than before.
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Actually, the liberal, unconstitutional ideas you put forth here are the main reason this country is in the mess it's in. America has had a long line of presidents and congresses that were all too willing to ignore the Constitution. With the eventual forced assistance of the Supreme Court into this charade, it's been fairly easy for the leadership to move this country continually in a more liberal, unconstitutional direction.

Unless the leadership is willing to once again abide by the Constitution, the country will continue to go downhill. Since neither major politcal Party is willing to do this, we can expect to continue to watch America go downhill.

Thus far, what has been offered up as solutions by the Dems and Repubs amount to little more than a few small bandages and lots of window dressing.

Look back over the course of decades and we see these same battles and issues were going on regardless of who was president and who controlled congress and we can see over the course of those decades that things just continued to get worse until we reached the point we are in today with the leadership still heading us down the wrong road.


John,the most you can do is pray for kindofblue.
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You know, it gets really tiresome to hear that untrue mantra that there was a budget surplus under Clinton. When in fact, there was not. Simply stating that there was doesn't make it true. Let's look at some numbers:

The government can have a surplus even if it has trillions in debt, but it cannot have a surplus if that debt increased every year. This article is about surplus/deficit, not the debt. However, it analyzes the debt to prove there wasn't a surplus under Clinton.

For those that want a more detailed explanation of why a claimed $236 billion surplus resulted in the national debt increasing by $18 billion, please read this follow-up article.


Time and time again, anyone reading the mainstream news or reading articles on the Internet will read the claim that President Clinton not only balanced the budget, but had a surplus. This is then used as an argument to further highlight the fiscal irresponsibility of the federal government under the Bush administration.

The claim is generally made that Clinton had a surplus of $69 billion in FY1998, $123 billion in FY1999 and $230 billion in FY2000 . In that same link, Clinton claimed that the national debt had been reduced by $360 billion in the last three years, presumably FY1998, FY1999, and FY2000--though, interestingly, $360 billion is not the sum of the alleged surpluses of the three years in question ($69B + $123B + $230B = $422B, not $360B).

While not defending the increase of the federal debt under President Bush, it's curious to see Clinton's record promoted as having generated a surplus. It never happened. There was never a surplus and the facts support that position. In fact, far from a $360 billion reduction in the national debt in FY1998-FY2000, there was an increase of $281 billion.

Verifying this is as simple as accessing the U.S. Treasury (see note about this link below) website where the national debt is updated daily and a history of the debt since January 1993 can be obtained. Considering the government's fiscal year ends on the last day of September each year, and considering Clinton's budget proposal in 1993 took effect in October 1993 and concluded September 1994 (FY1994), here's the national debt at the end of each year of Clinton Budgets:

Fiscal
Year Year
Ending National Debt Deficit
FY1993 09/30/1993 $4.411488 trillion
FY1994 09/30/1994 $4.692749 trillion $281.26 billion
FY1995 09/29/1995 $4.973982 trillion $281.23 billion
FY1996 09/30/1996 $5.224810 trillion $250.83 billion
FY1997 09/30/1997 $5.413146 trillion $188.34 billion
FY1998 09/30/1998 $5.526193 trillion $113.05 billion
FY1999 09/30/1999 $5.656270 trillion $130.08 billion
FY2000 09/29/2000 $5.674178 trillion $17.91 billion
FY2001 09/28/2001 $5.807463 trillion $133.29 billion

As can clearly be seen, in no year did the national debt go down, nor did Clinton leave President Bush with a surplus that Bush subsequently turned into a deficit. Yes, the deficit was almost eliminated in FY2000 (ending in September 2000 with a deficit of "only" $17.9 billion), but it never reached zero--let alone a positive surplus number. And Clinton's last budget proposal for FY2001, which ended in September 2001, generated a $133.29 billion deficit. The growing deficits started in the year of the last Clinton budget, not in the first year of the Bush administration.

Keep in mind that President Bush took office in January 2001 and his first budget took effect October 1, 2001 for the year ending September 30, 2002 (FY2002). So the $133.29 billion deficit in the year ending September 2001 was Clinton's. Granted, Bush supported a tax refund where taxpayers received checks in 2001. However, the total amount refunded to taxpayers was only $38 billion . So even if we assume that $38 billion of the FY2001 deficit was due to Bush's tax refunds which were not part of Clinton's last budget, that still means that Clinton's last budget produced a deficit of 133.29 - 38 = $95.29 billion.

Clinton clearly did not achieve a surplus and he didn't leave President Bush with a surplus.

So why do they say he had a surplus?

As is usually the case in claims such as this, it has to do with Washington doublespeak and political smoke and mirrors.

Understanding what happened requires understanding two concepts of what makes up the national debt. The national debt is made up of public debt and intragovernmental holdings. The public debt is debt held by the public, normally including things such as treasury bills, savings bonds, and other instruments the public can purchase from the government. Intragovernmental holdings, on the other hand, is when the government borrows money from itself--mostly borrowing money from social security.

Looking at the makeup of the national debt and the claimed surpluses for the last 4 Clinton fiscal years, we have the following table:

Fiscal
Year End
Date Claimed
Surplus Public
Debt Intra-gov
Holdings Total National
Debt
FY1997 09/30/1997 $3.789667T $1.623478T $5.413146T
FY1998 09/30/1998 $69.2B $3.733864T $55.8B $1.792328T $168.9B $5.526193T $113B
FY1999 09/30/1999 $122.7B $3.636104T $97.8B $2.020166T $227.8B $5.656270T $130.1B
FY2000 09/29/2000 $230.0B $3.405303T $230.8B $2.268874T $248.7B $5.674178T $17.9B
FY2001 09/28/2001 $3.339310T $66.0B $2.468153T $199.3B $5.807463T $133.3B


For the rest:http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/16
for the follow up article mentioned above: http://www.craigsteiner.us/articles/30
Numbers don't lie, unless human beings manipulate those numbers. People do lie, and Clinton's cronies did when they began claiming a budget surplus under Clinton.

Yes, the deficit rose under Bush. But let's remember when it was at it's worse: when the House (the origin of finance stuff) was run by Pelosi and her ilk (including then-Senator BO). And it was those folk who pandered to Freddie and Fannie and caused the housing meltdown. What does that have to do with the OP? Simply that there are few Democrats (some, but few) who are fiscally responsible. Yes, there are GOP who are not as well. But there are some newly elected House members, as well as other House GOP, who are and I for one welcome them.

Raise taxes? Sure fire way to kill the economy. It does every time. Raising taxes is not the answer. Cutting, SEVERELY cutting, bloated government spending is the only way to really begin to reduce the deficit. Starting with the healthcare debacle, the rest of the stimulus funds, etc. I for one think the entire congress (and the executive branch) needs to take a pay cut. Like so many Americans have had to do. That'll save a bit of money, too.

Actually, John, I disagree that what's been offered up thus far amounts to bandages. The House GOP has set forth a plan to cut millions from the budget. Yes, compared to trillions, that isn't much, but it's a start. And I am hoping for more. I think this current House is a lot more interested in keeping their promises than Newt's nonsense a few years back.

No, America hasn't always been right. But she's been a force for good in this world, no matter what the naysayers promote. Mistakes have been made - and they have been rectified in many cases. Butting into states' rights isn't the way to handle it...but, you see, the black situation ended up being a constitutional issue, re: amendment 14. And that is where the federal government had the authority to step in in the '60's. Problem is, the government didn't make things better for blacks (or even poor white people...let's not forget how downtrodden they've been... :coolsmiley: ). Whenever government makes folk dependent on them, the folk become poorer - not just financially, but in every way.

I live between two cities where that is so obvious. Welfare has created a class of truly oppressed people, both black and white. And we condemn the founders for slavery? Ha! I've lived in WV and KY, and where I am now...a people dependent on their government is a people who are slaves. And that's what power in the hands of "government' does. (and that power is gained in many ways, not the least of which is raising taxes...)
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Good reply regarding the Clinton years. I though of addressing that but didn't have the time at the moment.

The cuts currently proposed amount to nothing. It would be a start if they had real, serious plans to make what many would consider drastic cuts immediately following the currently proposed cuts. Unfortunately, they don't and the currently considered cuts alone will make little difference.

A Repub Senator from Georgia was talking earlier about some propasals put forth by Rand Paul that had some good aspects, but he wasn't willing to go along with "the more drastic proposals".

The only way we could have a true beginning at slimming down DC and getting the budget in order would be to start eliminating entire departments, agencies and programs. The Repubs don't have the guts to do this and the Dems certainly won't. Over the years there have been many cuts and freezes in spending but they are shortlived and quickly followed by budget increases for those who had been effected by the cuts and freezes.

From at least the time of President Reagan onward there have been calls for the Repubs to eliminate several of the unconstitutional departments, agencies and programs in DC. President Reagan couldn't get any support for this and quickly dropped it as the dead and losing issue it was. We've had Repub controlled congresses, even with a Repub in the White House, and they didn't eliminate these unconstitutional, unnecessary, extremely costly entities.

We face the situation of having failed to kick the camel in the nose when he first stuck it under the tent and now we face the near impossible task of getting the camel out of the tent without wrecking the tent.

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You have to really listen to these ex-lawyer political parsers who give this information. There may have been a "budget" surplus for a particular year; but there was a national debt. This is the same kind of word smithing that allowed Clinton to say, "I want you to listen to me, I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and be legally correct; yet make it sound like he did nothing sexual in nature. By the "legal definition" of "sexual relations" he may have been telling the truth; while in fact lying to the American people who thought he was saying something all together different.

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You have to really listen to these ex-lawyer political parsers who give this information. There may have been a "budget" surplus for a particular year; but there was a national debt. This is the same kind of word smithing that allowed Clinton to say, "I want you to listen to me, I did not have sexual relations with that woman" and be legally correct; yet make it sound like he did nothing sexual in nature. By the "legal definition" of "sexual relations" he may have been telling the truth; while in fact lying to the American people who thought he was saying something all together different.


Yes, the Clinton "surplus" was a matter of smoke and mirrors. Unfortunately, much of what comes out of DC today is the same thing.
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