The President Throws Down the Gauntlet

One of the best lines from President Obama’s speech is afternoon was when he said, “You just can’t be against something; you've got to be for something.” He told the Republicans stop having meaningless votes on repealing Obamacare and come up with a better plan. I took it to mean “put up or shut up.” The Affordable Care Act has never been popular in polls (34% approve, and 47% oppose)but as Cokie Roberts said this morning, the Kaiser Foundation has a much better poll which shows that people love different components of the Affordable Care Act, but they are still confused about certain aspects of the plan. Who can blame them with the smokescreens the GOP throws out. Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee want to tie repealing Obamacare to raising the debt ceiling and are willing to shut down the government over it. They might as well call for shutting down the government right now.

President Obama will continue to use his bully pulpit because he knows that his good plans will never see the light of day in Congress. The president has seen his approval dropped to a low of 45% because of the staggering economy. Congress has dropped to an all -time low of 12% and 57% of the voters would vote to replace everyone, and that doesn’t bode well for the GOP if they want to retake the Senate.

The president talked about investing in our future, and he emphasized it by saying, “if you think education is expensive. wait until you see how much ignorance costs in the 21^st century.” He knows Congress is a problem, so he said he will bend the ear of educators, business leaders and CEOs to get something done. The president said that the FCC is currently working to get high- speed Internet to  in 99% of our schools. That was one example of what a president has the power to do. The other is making the costs of making higher education affordable.

I liked that the president brought up the idea of a minimum wage increase and said he will reward the CEOs and business leaders who treat their employees’ right. He singled out Costco and the Container Store for the efforts in paying their employees a decent wage, providing health care and other benefits.

The president was honest by saying that even if we don’t implement all of his ideas, the economy will keep growing because of our resources, standing, and  our resilient people, but we will grow at a much slower pace. He said most of our bridges would be eligible for Medicare. Our buildings, airports and broadband services need upgrading and repair because we’re falling behind our competitors.

The Republicans will roll their eyes, some will write pessimistic, uninformative letters –to- our editor and others will continue to oppose anything that President Obama is for. Let them consume themselves with President Obama,phony scandals,$17 trillion debt ,empty rhetoric and keep supporting their bad legislators because our economy will continue to improve without any help from them, and the voters will take notice in 2014.