ANALYSIS
by Glynn Wilson

Massachusetts Mormon Mitt Romney released his tax returns on Monday, finally, showing he is a billionaire who only paid 13.9 percent in taxes on $42.5 million in income last year, all of it earned not from labor but from paper, interest on investments. At the same time, he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in Florida making crazy, false statements to get media attention, saying America is in decline and blaming it on President Barack Obama, because he is “a failure.”

A look at the facts below shows otherwise.

Meanwhile, President Obama went on national television to make his annual State of the Union Address before Congress, and made a number of factual statements about the situation and his record. Here is our analysis of some key points.

The key quote?

“Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn’t know what they’re talking about,” the president said, and the facts show he is right on this, not the Republicans.

One of the demands the public made on Mr. Obama when he was running for president in 2008 was to end Bush’s war in Iraq and get American troops out. He not only did that, but oversaw the destruction of Osama bin Laden too.

“For the first time in nine years, there are no Americans fighting in Iraq,” Mr. Obama said. “For the first time in two decades, Osama bin Laden is not a threat to this country.”

Arguably the biggest issue facing the nation is the need to get the economy moving again, to create jobs. Romney and the Republicans are claiming the U.S. lost jobs under Mr. Obama’s leadership, but the facts tell a different story.

“In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs,” Mr. Obama said in his State of the Union speech. “On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences. We got the industry to retool and restructure. Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number-one automaker. Chrysler has grown faster in the U.S. than any major car company. Ford is investing billions in U.S. plants and factories. And together, the entire industry added nearly 160,000 jobs.”

Under President Bush’s administration, the U.S. not only ran up a huge budget deficit, but a trade deficit as well. That is being erased under President Obama’s leadership.

“We’re also making it easier for American businesses to sell products all over the world,” Mr. Obama said. “Two years ago, I set a goal of doubling U.S. exports over five years. With the bipartisan trade agreements we signed into law, we’re on track to meet that goal ahead of schedule. We’ve brought trade cases against China at nearly twice the rate as the last administration –- and it’s made a difference. Over a thousand Americans are working today because we stopped a surge in Chinese tires.”

The Repulicans also like to claim they are the party willing to take on the illegal immigration problem, but we have seen the problems with their policy approaches in states such as Alabama, where an overreaching law had all kinds of unintended consequences, including running off more industries that could have created jobs. Alabama’s illegal immigration law did not create one single job for an Alabama worker.

“I believe as strongly as ever that we should take on illegal immigration,” Mr. Obama said in his speech. “That’s why my administration has put more boots on the border than ever before. That’s why there are fewer illegal crossings than when I took office.”

One of the main priorities of the Obama administration is to shift federal incentives from old, fossil fuel industries to new, clean energy sources. The record shows progress has been made, even though we’ve got a long way to go.

“In three years, our partnership with the private sector has already positioned America to be the world’s leading manufacturer of high-tech batteries,” Mr. Obama said. “Because of federal investments, renewable energy use has nearly doubled, and thousands of Americans have jobs because of it. We’ve subsidized oil companies for a century. That’s long enough.

“It’s time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising,” Mr. Obama challenged members of Congress. “Pass clean energy tax credits. Create these jobs.”

The president can’t make these changes alone. If the obstructionist members of Congress, especially the tea party Republicans in the House do not stop being the “Party of No,” not much will get done and the nation’s economy will continue to limp along with only modest growth.

“Building this new energy future should be just one part of a broader agenda to repair America’s infrastructure,” Mr. Obama said. “So much of America needs to be rebuilt. We’ve got crumbling roads and bridges; a power grid that wastes too much energy; an incomplete high-speed broadband network that prevents a small business owner in rural America from selling her products all over the world. During the Great Depression, America built the Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge. After World War II, we connected our states with a system of highways. Democratic and Republican administrations invested in great projects that benefited everybody, from the workers who built them to the businesses that still use them today.”

In the next few weeks, Mr. Obama said, he will sign an executive order clearing away the red tape that slows down too many construction projects.

“But you need to fund these projects,” the president chided Congress. “Take the money we’re no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home.”

While the president was criticized for his handling of the BP Gulf oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico two years ago, his administration has made major changes in how the federal government regulates the oil and gas industry that was just placed on auto-pilot under Bush’s deregulation scheme.

The health care reform law passed in Mr. Obama’s first year as president is also working to prevent corrupt insurance companies from denying coverage to legitimate, paying customers.

“I will not back down from making sure an oil company can contain the kind of oil spill we saw in the Gulf two years ago,” Mr. Obama declared in his speech. “I will not back down from protecting our kids from mercury poisoning, or making sure that our food is safe and our water is clean. I will not go back to the days when health insurance companies had unchecked power to cancel your policy, deny your coverage, or charge women differently than men.”

In the wake of the worst economic meltdown since the Great Depression, Mr. Obama’s bailout of the banks and auto companies saved the world from a total economic collapse. That is failure? Hardly. While there is much that could be criticized about the plan, which did not put enough regulations back on banks and their CEOs, it did result in some important changes in federal regulations.

“If you are a big bank or financial institution, you’re no longer allowed to make risky bets with your customers’ deposits,” Mr. Obama said. “You’re required to write out a ‘living will’ that details exactly how you’ll pay the bills if you fail –- because the rest of us are not bailing you out ever again. And if you’re a mortgage lender or a payday lender or a credit card company, the days of signing people up for products they can’t afford with confusing forms and deceptive practices — those days are over. Today, American consumers finally have a watchdog in Richard Cordray with one job: To look out for them.”

While the U.S. is still running a huge budget deficit, progress has been made, with little help from the Republicans in Congress.

“We’ve already agreed to more than $2 trillion in cuts and savings. But we need to do more, and that means making choices,” Mr. Obama said. “Right now, we’re poised to spend nearly $1 trillion more on what was supposed to be a temporary tax break for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans. Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households. Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.”

So the president put the question to the American people.

“Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans? Or do we want to keep our investments in everything else –- like education and medical research; a strong military and care for our veterans? Because if we’re serious about paying down our debt, we can’t do both,” Mr. Obama said.

He said the Republicans and Fox News can call that “class warfare” all they want to, “but asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense,” the president said.

“The greatest blow to our confidence in our economy last year didn’t come from events beyond our control. It came from a debate in Washington over whether the United States would pay its bills or not,” Mr. Obama said, and rightly so. “Who benefited from that fiasco?” he asked. Not the Republicans. Not the Democrats. Not the American people.

“I’ve talked tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street,” Mr. Obama said. “But the divide between this city and the rest of the country is at least as bad — and it seems to get worse every year. Some of this has to do with the corrosive influence of money in politics. So together, let’s take some steps to fix that. Send me a bill that bans insider trading by members of Congress; I will sign it tomorrow.”

The Question for Occupy Protesters

Of course Congress will not do such a thing to regulate itself — unless enough people surround the Capitol building and harass individual members of Congress in their driveways. Hey Occupy protesters! Are you listening? It’s not Obama’s fault. He needs your help to force Congress to change. Are you going to be part of the solution to change the world for the better and help form a more perfect union? Or are you just going to just be obstructionist and be part of the problem? You can’t change things without accurate information. That’s our mission. Get onboard.

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Tags: Mitt Romney, State of the Union

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 25th, 2012 at 10:29 am and is filed under Elections 2012, Labor News, Political News, Politics and Government, President Barack Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.