A hard look at the State of the Union

In Wednesday's tediously long, yet significant, State of the Union address, President Obama laid out a plan to heal our domestic injuries: a whole new batch of extensive tax credits for thousands of small businesses and an abrupt freeze in federal discretionary spending for the next three years. As the commander in chief chastised the Supreme Court for its disgusting decision to allow campaign financing to become a corporate spending clusterfuck, I learned something new about politics. When Obama says the word "jobs," Democrats jump up faster than you can say "boondoggle" and the Republicans frown as if they want Ronald Reagan to fix their boo-boos. The budget brainchild proposed by Obama deserves a strict critique. Let us start first with the tax credits.

If the president is striving to solve the unemployment catastrophe, this is a great step. At a cost of $33 billion in one year, the tax credit and its hacking of employers' payroll taxes is the "most cost-effective approach — after extending unemployment benefits — to stimulating economic output and job growth," according to Sewell Chan of The New York Times and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The small business sector is a major outlet of employment and Republican support, so the tax credit will kill two birds with one stone. More importantly, jobs will be more readily available just in time for the 2010 midterm elections. As you can see, I am a consistent cynic (how can you blame me after the Bush years?), but I applaud Obama for his political genius. I expect the centrist Democrats and barely existent liberals in Congress to be supportive of the tax credit. With Republican politicians, I expect to hear the word "Bolshevik" thrown around.

That's it for the brown-nosing today; as I said before, the President's decisions must always be put under a political microscope. As Bill Maher would say, Obama is "the president, not your boyfriend." Along with tax credits, Obama also proposed the absurd idea of freezing domestic spending for the next three years. Opposing all the Keynesian economic principles that he represented in 2008, the president proved that he is becoming a replica of former President Clinton in the mid-'90s, making a move to the center of Democratic principles in order to seem moderate to voters. Since "liberal" is still a dirty word in today's lexicon, the Democrats will always be afraid of becoming too leftist because mainstream America has the sensitivity of a child. That's how the Tea Party right-wing fringe was formed.

It is counterintuitive to freeze domestic spending in our troubled times. The government must continue to inject money into the economy until the country returns to stability. If the government were to freeze spending, how would Congress create the necessary new projects all across the country and react to unforeseen future events? It is blatant that Obama made this move simply to silence the deficit hawks in the center.

Democrats and Republicans will likely both support the freeze. The Democrats are ardent supporters of every action the White House makes, and the ecstatic post-Massachusetts-election Republicans always agree with deficit-reducing devices.

Word of advice to the president, though: If you want to boost your falling poll numbers, stress the effective tax credits on Main Street instead of selling out on your principles.