Selected observations on the State of the Union

*Originally appeared in the Jan. 30 edition of the Laurel Chronicle newspaper

Tuesday night marked the fifth State of the Union delivered by President Obama, thus fulfilling his duty to “from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

As expected, he called on Congress to extend unemployment benefits, enact measures to ensure equal pay for equal work, and establish a minimum wage of $10.10. The President who has claimed his is the “most transparent” of all administrations allotted all of one sentence to talk about transparency and reforms in America’s surveillance programs.

His sharpest tone came when defending his signature healthcare law, a.k.a. Obamacare. Suggesting Republicans haven’t come up with specific plans to improve healthcare, the President said the “American people are not interested in refighting old battles” and that we “all owe it to the American people to say what we’re for, not just what we’re against.”

Translation: Obamacare is the law. I don’t want to talk about how it increases healthcare costs and raise taxes on Americans. I don’t want to talk about my administration’s complete failure to set up a website – a website! – to enroll participants. Let’s just move on. Nothing to see here.

Obama wasted no time in making one thing clear: He’ll move forward with priority agenda items with or without Congressional approval. His words: “Wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation…that’s what I’m going to do.”

Translation: Nah nah nah nah boo boo.

It’s interesting how aggressive this statement was, given the President is not exactly enjoying high marks from the public right now. For the first time on the eve of a State of the Union address, “more Americans rate his performance negatively than positively, with 50 percent disapproving” according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Even more people – 69 percent – think it’s better for Obama to work with Congress than go around it, according to a Rasmussen poll.

It’s also interesting to note how freely the President discusses his authority to implement policies through executive action. For a constitutional scholar, Obama seems to dismiss this document as little more than a loosely arranged set of recommendations.

The President spent some time talking about economic policies, although I won’t focus on the entirety of his proposals in this column. I was pleased to hear his support for investing in proven (that’s an important word) job training programs that train workers in high-growth and high-demand areas where jobs actually exist. He cited on-the-job training and apprenticeship programs as models that work, and I tend to agree.

Just as I was nodding my head in agreement, however, he went to talking about extending unemployment benefits – again. Unemployment insurance is a temporary program that has already been extended eleven times. Eleven times. Not only do I think this is fiscally irresponsible, I also think it’s just bad public policy to treat a temporary program as a permanent solution to today’s economic challenges.

After the speech, I stumbled across Roll Call newspaper’s “State of the Union in Three Words” hashtag (#sotuin3words). Here is a sampling of how several members of Congress summed up the speech:

“Talk is cheap.” “A home run.” “Lame duck quacking.” “No jobs plan.” “Invest in America.”

Of course, there were also a few that exceeded the three word limit (“Skills Act; pass it!”) that made me chuckle.

This won’t come as a surprise to those who know me, but my favorite line in the State of the Union was related to the Winter Olympics: “Next week, the world will see one expression of that commitment [to dignity and equality] – when Team USA marches the red, white, and blue into the Olympic Stadium – and brings home the gold.”

For those of you who wonder about “worst-case” scenarios (terrorist attack, zombie apocalypse, etc.) wiping out the president and his team during the State of the Union festivities, fear not. This year, as is tradition, one member of the President’s Cabinet stayed behind to ensure continuity of the U.S. government should we be faced with ravenous zombies. The lucky designee was U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, a.k.a. the “designated survivor.”

I’ll leave you with another interesting fact that I didn’t learn until this week’s annual address. Turns out, this speech hasn’t always been one. Our nation’s third president Thomas Jefferson disliked the idea of giving a “state of the union” speech, as he considered it too imperial-like. Instead, Jefferson opted to send his thoughts in writing, thus starting a tradition that would last over a century (until President Woodrow Wilson decided to revive the spoken address).