State of the Union

Photo by Katie Falkenberg Washington Times

George Bush on the state of the union January 23 , 2007 :

This is a decent and honorable country-and resiliant , too . We have
been
through a lot together. We've met challenges and faced dangers , and we
know
that more lie ahead . Yet we can go forward with confidence- because
the State
of our union is strong ...our cause in the world is right...and
tonight that
cause goes on .

God Bless

Such was the ending of the President's State of the Union speech last night , in which he outlined a few things he would like Congress to do as we enter this time of Democrat control of Congress . He is hopeful they will work together in a bi-partisan way that simply doesn't exist today .

He has presided over the growth of our economy , the creation of millions of new jobs , low unemployment , low inflation , and rising wages , but his opponents will surely downplay those achievements by telling us they are at the expense of the average workers in the country .

They tell us that rising corporate profits do not benefit us at all , only the money-grubbing corporations and their CEOs .

The President wants to continue to work on balancing the budget without raising taxes , partly by imposing spending discipline in Congress ( by the way , his regime has not done quite that yet ) , and restraining the spending appetite of the Federal government , cutting earmarks ( another thing his folks did not do ) , and reforming the budget process .

None of this will wash with the Democrats , of course . They are "progressive" to a fault and will fight him all the way . Some changes will occur , but if the Liberals have their way , all changes will be to their specifications , not worked out in a bi-partisan fashion .

Most of the rest of the speech was nothing new , even the comments on Medicare , Medicaid , and Social Security .

Bush's comments on the war on terror and the Iraq war were just reiterations of what we have been hearing plenty of lately , nothing new there .

In my view the speech was not great , nor was it revealing . More revealing was the Democrat "response" by Senator Jim Webb of Virginia , which as has been in many years past produced beforehand , and designed to be in opposition to anything offered in the President's speech . Webb even said :

It would not be possible in this short amount of time to actually rebut
the President's message , nor would it be useful .