Obama’s State of the Union Address: Full of Contradictions, Lacking Actual Effect

China Daily report: Obama’s first State of the Union address was still very “Obama” — enthusiastic, lively, concise and infectious. As always, it won many rounds of applause from the audience, but it’s not difficult to find contradictions if we delve into the details.

In the address, Obama stated that the major governmental task in 2010 would be to create jobs. He called for Congress to pass the related regulations as soon as possible, to retrieve the $30 billion that was used for the Wall Street bailout and reuse the money for offering loans to small enterprises. He plans to exempt the capital gain tax on small companies and reduce or exempt taxes on small enterprises that hire new employees. Obama believes that enterprise development is the engine behind creating jobs and government should help to pave the way for it. However, he also cut the funds for the Wall Street bailout, despite the risk of damaging commercial interest and reducing the credit loan fund. Apparently, carrying out these two measures at the same time is just like the contradiction of hoping the horse will stay alive, but not feeding it.

Obama claims he will reduce the deficit and government debt, the corresponding measure of which is to freeze funding for non-national defense expenses for three years. But Obama doesn’t dare increase interest rates or cut bailout funds. Even the funds retrieved from Wall Street have to serve the major task of creating jobs.

Obama also emphasized the importance of the costly healthcare reform, which is claimed to have a constructive effect on stimulating the employment market. Obviously, this is also a contradiction, like saving penny by penny with the left hand while spending millions and billions with right hand. With such a measure, the goal of reducing the deficit and public debt can hardly be achieved. Obama said that another way to reduce the financial deficit is to set up a bipartisan committee. But the fact that this proposal has been recently turned down by the Senate clearly proves that neither the Democratic nor Republican party approves of this kind of bipartisan cooperation, which, according to Obama, will be put into effect by force. However, President Obama did not give any explanation, so we do not know how such a cooperation[-based] committee will help reduce the deficit if neither party will cooperate.

In the address, Obama claimed to promote exports. He even made a specific goal of doubling exports within five years, but as for how to achieve that, where the target market will be or what the competitive products will be, Obama did not say. What is more, protectionism in America has recently grown more and more severe, and there will definitely be more and more cases of anti-dumping and tariff walls incuring retribution from other countries. This situation apparently runs opposite to the goal of doubling exports within five years.

The whole address is full of these kinds of confusing contradictions. We can’t tell whether Obama wants to prop up or press down the bourgeois, to stimulate or oppress commerce, to promote or control credit and loans, to increase or decrease government expenditures, to strike or give slack to the financial capital of Wall Street; we can’t tell whether the Federal Reserve will increase interest rates, whether the bailout fund will be retrieved or whether the financial regulations will be effective enough. Obama waves his hand confidently and calls out, “let’s go,” but people just can not guess from his confusing hand signals or flickering eyes which direction he wants to go.

A poll carried out by the Wall Street Journal and NBC showed that nearly 60 percent of the polltakers think America is taking the wrong track, about 50 percent are against Obama’s financial policy and 45 percent think healthcare reform is a failure. The low-income group is not satisfied with the double-digit unemployment rate or the quick recovery of Wall Street tycoons; the high-income group is critical of Wall Street being the target of the reform. Facing these contradictions, but not daring to carry out harsh reform, Obama can only play to both sides; therefore, this State of the Union address was a dud — it seemingly solved every problem, but actually did nothing.

Therefore, some critics worry that, facing such a dead end in domestic affairs, the Obama administration will take up the same tricks as his predecessors —such as a cold war, a shooting war or a trade war — in order to push the crisis onto other nations. But if that really happens, it will certainly intensify the conflict between America and other political and economic entities. In the end it will lead America to containment or even destruction, having a counterproductive effect to the original intention of this address — to create jobs, promote exports and reduce expenditures.

The Democratic Party just lost the absolute majority in the Senate and a sequence of important votes is about to take place. Maybe then the American people will know how much confidence and patience they should have with Obama’s State of the Union address.