In what was arguably the worst year in Obama’s presidency all eyes were on the President this Tuesday to see what he thinks about the state of the country is in. With his latest approval ranking hovering around 41 percent, Mr. Obama had much to talk about during his yearly speech to Congress. Issues like Edward Snowden, the unpopularity of Obamacare, trouble with government websites, the IRS scandal, Benghazi, the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and the war on coal all happened in 2013, yet the theme of the presidents speech was about the apparent inequality people in this country face.
This year with start of Obamacare, millions of Americans are being forced into buying healthcare whether they want to or not. Obama believes this to be an attempt to bridge the gap of economic inequality and even said that those with pre-existing plans could keep their plans if they wanted to. As of recently, we know this last part was a lie but none-the-less, the country was led to believe it to be true. What Obama doesn’t know, but was illustrated by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington who gave the Republican response to the State of the Union, was that economic inequality isn’t the big issue, it’s opportunity inequality which has been hindered.
When the rules become stricter, options become more limited. When options are limited, there is less of a chance of personal success. By forcing Americans to accept the various initiatives the president has proposed, he is limiting their options. One of the best examples of this opportunity inequality is the IRS targeting politically conservative groups and preventing them from gaining tax-exempt status and collecting information on their members. Obama seems to be actively creating inequality to anyone who opposes him. Although Obama spoke highly of recent job increases and our weaning desire for foreign fuel sources, his actions have proven that those simply aren’t things he wants to focus on.
The president’s war on coal was a direct shot at the blue collar coal miners in parts of Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Ohio who helped support him in his reelection. The goal of the war on coal is to severely limit the amount of coal Americans use, effectively putting hundreds of thousands of coal miners out of work. This, along with Obama’s stance against fracking, which has been determined to be safe by several observing institutions, is only taking away potential jobs away from Americans and forcing us back to foreign energy sources.
Overall, the president’s speech was fairly bland. There was no big initiative announced, no incredibly shocking statistic shared, which was probably a good thing seeing as his popularity is low. It would have been nice to see Obama address some of the many things that went wrong for his presidency this year but you can’t ask too much our political leaders, no matter what their affiliation.
