Disappointment in the State of the Union address

Those of us who care about this country, and about the economy in general, probably watched the president’s State of the Union address. I hope that many also watched the Republican response.

This year, I was once again watching with hope of good news from either side. Once again, I was disappointed. This time I was disappointed more than usual.

Our president, energized by his November victory, laid out some pretty lofty plans for a country mired in recession. I’m sure that he means well, but he just doesn’t seem to understand how the debt is destroying our economic system. The small reduction in first-time unemployment benefits was a result of Hurricane Sandy’s destruction. It was not an indicator that the economy is on the mend. We still have more than 300,000 people filing for unemployment benefits, each week.

We cannot afford to pay for a $9 minimum wage. We cannot afford to pay for pre-school for every child in the US. We don’t have any money to rebuild all of our old bridges. I still cannot figure out which part of a $16.5 trillion debt is the difficult part. Immigration reform is only needed by those who refuse to enforce our current laws.

Marco Rubio was very disappointing as well. He spoke for a party that admires and tries to follow our founding fathers, by following the Constitution. Marco spoke of making it easy for smart kids from other countries to come here to learn and take away jobs from our own children. He also spoke of how sequestration is going to cause us to reduce our military presence around the world. Our Constitution is clearly designed to force our government officials to take care of us, not children from another land.

There is nothing in the Constitution that dictates that we should protect the world or even to spread democracy. We have no money. We also have a $16 trillion debt. When the debt is paid off, the government can consider charity abroad.

There was good news this past week. GOP leaders, are sounding as though they are certain that sequestration is going to come about on March first. This will be the first step in fixing our economy. It is a small step, but let’s hope that leaders can keep the ball rolling in the same, deficit reducing, direction.

I hope that many of my readers, were able to read Congressman Pitts’ column last week. Joe wrote a fabulous column on Obamacare and the federal bureaucracy in general. The debt and the never ending government regulations, are strangling our economy. Anyone who thinks that our economy is on the mend is not seeing the whole picture. There will always be a little spark of hope in one area or another. In the big, overall picture, things are still painfully stagnate, or shrinking at an increasing rate.

Gas prices are climbing at a fast rate. There will be no recovery to speak of if prices get over $4 per gallon. Our debt is growing, our children can’t afford to pay for college, and our government cares little about them. The government is supposed to be for the people, and by the people. When they said people, they meant people who are born here or naturalized citizens. They did not mean people born in Pakistan, Romania or some other foreign land.

David Paul Snyder is the flight training program manager for two Israeli business jets. He is a former pilot for PanAm and is the former chairman of the Bucks County Airport Authority.