President Barack Obama’s first State of the Union address Wednesday night was insightful and encouraging. He spoke with ease and tried to inspire American’s to have faith in the man they elected a year ago.
In his address, Obama said to trust his stimulus plan, which will now cost around $862 billion. Obama wants this to pull America out of the worst recession in 80 years. This is something I thought he might talk about when I wrote my last blog. Trusting his plan and his word will try to help the nation recover stronger than before. He also offered new proposals such as $30 billion for banks to encourage lending to small businesses. That is something I did not predict in my first blog about the State of the Union address.
However, I did say in my first blog he might mimic Ronald Reagan’s fourth State of the Union address. He did not talk about Reagan’s fourth, but rather his 1982 budget message to Congress. I think that is close enough. In his second year as president, Reagan entered office with the same problems Obama faces today, such as high unemployment and a falling economy. Reagan told the nation to have faith in him and his plan so the country would recover. Obama’s time in office mimic’s Reagan’s from 1982 because they both took office with a mess to clean up. This is something I have thought about before. While Reagan and Obama differ in many ways, they both entered office at a time of economic turmoil.
In my prediction blog, I thought Obama might talk about unemployment. Last night, Obama reminded American’s there are more jobs to come. "Because of the steps we took, there are about 2 million Americans working right now who would otherwise be unemployed," Obama said. “And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by the end of the year.” My predictions were half and half. I knew he would talk about unemployment, but did not expect to hear the extent of his plans. I am interested to hear what he will say in his next State of the Union address.
Like you Ryan, I also found my predictions to be half and half. He dedicated over 75% of his speech to the economy and I really didn't see that coming. I thought more of that would have been split up between other hot topic issues such as health care reform and the war. I thought his speech did look similar to Reagan's and he even mentioned that he was behind Reagan's beliefs about nuclear warfare. He also mentioned Kennedy, who I thought Obama might have similarities to. Interesting how he actually mentioned both of those former presidents in the speech, right?
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