I'm glad I passed on the SOTU speech last night. Based on Steve's drunkblogging, the WSJ summary, and the commentaries and analyses I've seen, it was well worth passing up. Besides, a good portion of it seems to have been recycled from last year, with some bits from 2009 thrown in, too.
Is this the second or third year that President Obama has solemnly declared that, like a family, the federal government must live within its means? No matter. It's not what the Prez says, it's what he does. And here's what he does (courtesy of The Captain's Comments):
This president has a lot of nerve talking about fiscal responsibility. How fiscally responsible is proposing a dozen or so massive new "investments" while annual deficits are well over $1 trillion? How fiscally responsible is proposing to freeze discretionary spending at its current stratospheric level?
The Republicans are talking about rolling it back to the 2008 level, and even that's far too timid.
In his response to the SOTU, Sen. Rand Paul said he's introduced a bill to cut spending by $500 billion this year. That's more like it! Take a look:
Check out Rep. Michele Bachmann's SOTU response, too:
[YouTube link ]