President Barack Obama will give the State of the Union speech tonight in Washington.As President Barack Obama stands before Congress tonight to deliver his State of the Union address, he will seek to put a good face on our nation's current situation. But the state of our Union is not what most of us would like it to be, and words that are not paired with sound actions will not change that.
Obama has promoted counterproductive policies, and it is hard to see how pushing the same ideas will help the president build optimism.
For instance, he wants Congress to raise taxes on the earnings of higher-income Americans. Not fully explained is how depriving that group -- many members of which have small businesses -- of more income will help them invest in job creation, nor why Washington should take more money from the private sector when it misspends what it already gets. We would hope the president would not even utter the word "stimulus" in his speech, after the previous stimulus failed -- at enormous cost -- to live up to the promises that it would "create or save" lots of jobs.
It is no surprise that polls show that more people disapprove than approve of Obama's handling of the economy. Unemployment remains at a painful 8.5 percent, after all, and the shaky "recovery" has been one of the slowest on record.
Our national debt -- more than $15 trillion -- has now surpassed our gross domestic product, the total annual economic output of the mighty United States. Despite that frightening fact, the president remains unwilling to call for real and significant spending cuts and entitlement reform. That should give pause to all Americans -- especially to those who will vote in November.
In short, the president cannot claim with authority that his policies helped the economy. Yet he almost certainly will claim that tonight.
However, unlike when Obama was first running for president, the American people can consider his record as the leader of our country and compare it with his rhetoric. And if they look at results rather than just words, they won't likely be pleased.