In his State of the Union Address, President Obama placed economic inequality center stage. He framed this issue in terms of fairness or justice to the poor. If our goal is to help people escape poverty, though, we need to ask some more urgent and personal questions. A debate about the “gap” between rich and poor isn’t a debate directly about people—it’s about, well, a gap. Focusing on the gap between individuals distracts us from focusing on poor individuals themselves. Rather than pretending that economic inequality is the main problem, …
President Obama unveiled a long list of economic policies during the State of the Union address that he wanted Congress to focus on this year. Click here to join us right now for our “Lunch with Heritage” chat. We are joined by Bill Beach, Heritage’s Director of the Center for Data Analysis, and he is taking your questions on the President’s proposals. Lunch with Heritage feat. Bill Beach
During Tuesday night’s State of the Union address, President Obama largely glossed over the ongoing war in Afghanistan, where nearly 100,000 American soldiers are fighting to prevent the reemergence of a terrorist safe haven in the region. He did, however, deliver a misleading statement on the subject in declaring that “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home.” The President’s inaccurate statement was duly noted by the Associated Press’s SOTU fact check, which highlighted findings of the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) …
In this week’s Heritage in Focus, Heritage director of communications, Rory Cooper, discusses the president’s State of the Union address. Click here to listen. What’s Heritage’s take on the State of the Union? What’s something Americans should have heard in the speech, but didn’t? What’s the best way to put our country on the right track? Make sure to listen to hear answers to these questions and more!
Those who might have nodded off after the first hour of President Obama’s third State of the Union address were surely brought back to consciousness by the startling claims on foreign policy and global leadership in the last third of the speech. As did much of the speech as a whole, it had a kind of Alice in Wonderland quality to it. “America is back,” proclaimed the President, who had just boasted of his ignominious troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq. “Anyone who tells you otherwise, anyone who tells you …
Speaking last night from the U.S. Capitol, President Barack Obama described the state of the Union as he sees it — strong and getting stronger, with future growth fueled by his pursuit of progressive policies and an expansion of government, all architected to bring about his brand of “fairness.” The President essentially redelivered his 2011 State of the Union address — complete with the same empty rhetoric, class warfare cloaked in “fairness,” and proposals for massive tax and spending increases. The speech was notable for the items he did not …
In listening to the State of the Union, you would never know that the U.S. still has close to 100,000 troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan. While President Obama highlighted U.S. gains against al-Qaeda and the significance of the raid that eliminated Osama bin Laden last May, he downplayed the challenges that remain in Afghanistan. President Obama merely said he was “winding down the war,” giving the false impression that the U.S. can depart Afghanistan on an arbitrary timetable without any costs to its national security. This paints a misleading …
In his State of the Union, President Obama has once again donned the mantle of progressivism, but this time rather than the radical argument that it is he claims it to be the core American tradition. At Osawatomie, Kansas, Teddy Roosevelt at his most progressive, and so was Obama, who said the choice was between “you’re-on-your-own economics” and the view that “we are greater together-when everyone engages in fair play, everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share.” The word “fair” recurs in various forms throughout the Osawatomie …
Before the Speech Begins – Emily Goff: Previewing tonight’s speech this past weekend, Mr. Obama said: “We can go in two directions. One is towards less opportunity and less fairness. Or we can fight for…building an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.” The President must not understand that an economy based on free-enterprise with limited government involvement will, in fact, work for and benefit more than just the wealthy. His administration’s idea of an economy that works involves imposing heavy-handed government regulations and threatening tax increases at …
Leading up to his third State of the Union (SOTU) address tonight, President Obama appears once again less interested in facilitating real job growth than in creating the mere appearance of job creation. In a SOTU preview video released over the weekend, Obama declared that American energy fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources is an important step toward rebuilding the economy. This statement in conjunction with last week’s rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline suggests a continuation of the misguided focus on the government pushing so-called “green jobs,” whether …
