The State of My Campaign Address

I, like most of the country, watched the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. Personally I get very tired of all the rhetoric and false promises, but watched anyway to stay in the loop.

Instead of a true State of the Union, it was more of a lengthy to-do list. That’s typical for a president running for a second term, but not exactly what many people wanted to see, considering he had the first two years of his presidency with control of both the house and the senate and did little with it. Now he complains that any lack of movement can be blamed on the GOP holding things up. Typical campaign finger-pointing yet again — followed by a “We’re not there yet”. Also known as the “give me another four years to REALLY do that stuff I talked about 4 years ago” line.

By now, most of us are used to these lofty campaign time promises by potential candidates. We know that, after the campaign is over, many of these planned programs and initiatives go by the wayside. That is, until a bit before election season when they throw a few bones out there. The President is no different.

One of my favorite lines of his was this:

“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.”

In case you were unaware sir, both wars have been funded from borrowed money. It’s not like we had it to spare. So your plan is to borrow more to pay down existing debt? That sounds like something…well, I would do, and seems a bit too reckless for an entire country.

Another topic was the bashing of the millionaires.

It’s true that some millionaires pay a lower tax rate than the average middle class family. Did you know that only about 25% of “millionaires” fall into this category. It’s less than 100,000 people. That means that 75% of these ultra wealthy are, in fact, paying a higher tax rate. By those numbers we can probably assume it’s the very tippy-top who are falling into that 25%. I hate to burst your bubble but big money will always find a way. They always have and always will. You can regulate until you’re blue in the face but they will always find a way around it. Maybe just to be safe, we stop spending so much and don’t rely on those extra tax dollars making up the staggering deficit? Just throwing that out there.

As far as the tax code as a whole — it’s too complicated. Thousands of pages can be a bit tough for anyone to understand – especially if you’re a growing small business – something we should nurture not overburden. Both sides know it needs to change, so do it!

The president did introduce several potential tax breaks in an attempt to reward businesses for reviving manufacturing in the US. The issue here is that any relatively new company will likely be unable to reap these tax breaks as they won’t be making money for the first few years. This then basically rewards large, well established companies instead. You know, the one’s making the billion dollar profits and “not paying their fair share” already.

Sounds like more band-aids for a wound that requires more serious attention. More complications to a tax code that is over over complicated already. More politics from Politicians. Who would have guessed?