By Joseph Kishore, wsws.org
(See also the Appendix, with an OpEd by Alternet’s Lynn Stuart Parramore, “Obama’s Underwhelming Plan to Tackle Inequality.”]
US President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday was, perhaps even more than his previous addresses, a cynical and reactionary charade. Empty rhetoric was combined with a complete disconnect from the reality confronting millions of people and an assertion of executive power.
The thrust of the speech was a mixture of pro-business nostrums, militarist jingoism and a jumble of penny-ante proposals. The media’s attempt to promote the speech as a major address on inequality was a deliberate falsification aimed at drumming up interest among a generally indifferent and hostile population.
Instead it was a threadbare attempt to cover over the reality of the past year, a year in which the mask fell off a society riven by historically unprecedented levels of social inequality and mass poverty, overseen by a vast police-state spying apparatus, on the verge of another global war of incalculable consequences and presided over by the most right-wing administration in US history.
Obama himself spoke before the members of the US House of Representatives and the Senate, the majority of them millionaires, as a representative of the financial aristocracy and the military-intelligence apparatus.
He began by painting the US as a country undergoing a booming economic recovery, with “the lowest unemployment rate in over five years,” a “rebounding housing market” and a growing manufacturing sector. He did not mention that the unemployment rate has fallen largely due to millions of people having given up the search for work, or that the very small increase in manufacturing jobs is due to the collapse of wages encouraged by the administration.
An empty ritual to preserve the idea of a functioning democracy, at loggerheads with truth in every respect. The mark of a system defined by lies and hypocrisy.
On economic policy, Obama began with a call to make things “easier for more companies” through tax breaks. The two parties, he said, were agreed that, “our tax code is riddled with wasteful, complicated loopholes that punish businesses investing here, and reward companies that keep profits abroad.” He called for a lowering of corporate tax rates, with media reports indicating that this might be as much as 7 percentage points.
In the midst of his praise for the supposed resurgence of manufacturing in America, Obama failed to mention that the historical center of American manufacturing, Detroit, is currently in bankruptcy. With the support of the administration, the courts are being utilized to force through deep cuts in pensions and cut off access to culture and other social rights.
Obama did, however, praise the new CEO of GM, Mary Barra, who was invited to the speech as a special guest. Barra, touted as the first female CEO of a major auto company, is planning to accelerate cost cutting in Europe and America in order to increase already surging profits in the auto industry. He also praised Detroit Manufacturing Systems, an auto parts supplier that has worked closely with the unions to hire workers at a fraction of their former wages.
The president, who has done more than any of his predecessors to funnel money into Wall Street, acknowledged that “corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better,” as if the policies of his own administration had nothing to do with it. He quickly claimed, however, that the American people “don’t resent those who, by virtue of their efforts, achieve incredible success.”
Presumably Obama was referring to the likes of JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, Obama’s favored banker, who, despite the repeated and documented criminal activities of his company, has not only gone unpunished, but last week received a 74 percent pay raise.
Obama made as brief a reference as possible to the fact that at the end of last year, due to the actions of Democrats and Republicans, 1.6 million people were cut off of extended unemployment benefits. At the same time, he called for “reforming unemployment insurance so that it’s more effective in today’s economy,” which could only mean introducing greater restrictions on eligibility.
The president was also silent on the Democrats and Republicans having just agreed to slash $8.7 billion from food stamps, only the second cut in the program since it was founded (the first coming just a few months ago). He touted a right-wing immigration reform and his health care overhaul, an opening shot against all the social programs introduced in the 1930s and 1960s.
The headline proposal from Obama, intended as a sop to the trade unions and the administration’s liberal and pseudo-left supporters, was an executive order to require federal contractors to pay a minimum wage of $10.10. This requirement will only apply to new or renewed contracts, not existing ones.
In the run-up to the speech, there was a concerted effort in the media to paint a picture of partisan gridlock, which Obama was proposing to overcome through executive actions. Given that Obama’s actual proposals amount to nothing, and that the parties are agreed on fundamentals, Obama’s repeated insistence that “I’m going to do” what is required has the distinct and ominous odor of a presidential dictatorship.
It is notable that even though it is an election year, Obama made no call for voters to elect individuals pledged to implement his proposals. Rather the speech was an assertion, from an individual who more than any other has presided over the shredding of large sections of the Constitution, that the president has the power to act regardless of opposition. The target of these actions is the working class.
There was almost no mention of the vast police-state spying apparatus that has been revealed over the past year. The president sits on top of a military-intelligence complex that monitors the communications of virtually the entire planet. The day before Obama’s remarks, the latest information from Edward Snowden revealed that the US and its UK partners collect data from cell phone applications in order to determine the “political alignments” of millions of users worldwide.
Obama’s only reference to the collapse of democratic rights was to defend the “vital work of our intelligence community” while promising token reforms in order to boost “public confidence, here and abroad, that the privacy of ordinary people is not being violated.” In fact, these reforms are intended to ensure that the government can go on violating this privacy.
As Obama spoke, Snowden remained in exile in Russia, facing death threats from US military and intelligence officials.
Obama heaped praise on the military, citing a plan for the long-term presence of tens of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan, insisting that the danger from Al Qaeda remains and threatening countries around the world. He welcomed recent moves from the Iranian regime to accommodate the demands of American imperialism and threatened that if Tehran fails to toe the line, war remains an option.
Obama lent support to the protests stoked by the US and European powers in Ukraine, led by extreme nationalist and fascistic forces. He pledged to “continue to focus on the Asia-Pacific,” a reference to the “pivot to Asia” that is aimed at countering China’s rise and threatens to unleash a global conflict.
As has become traditional in such events, Obama singled out individuals in the audience, generally victims of the policies of the ruling class, who are exploited to make various political points. Nowhere was this more sickening than at the end of the speech, when the president heaped praise on a veteran severely maimed by an explosion in Afghanistan.
The assembled congressmen—responsible for wars of aggression that inflicted a similar fate on thousands of Americans, while killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis—gave a lengthy standing ovation to one of the victims of their criminal policies. This spectacle was a fitting conclusion to a nauseating political ritual.
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APPENDIX
State of the Union: Obama’s Underwhelming Plan to Tackle Inequality
And… action! There he is, tall and lean, his pleasant face composed in an expression at once cheerful and slightly supercilious. It’s our president, looking painfully aware of the inauthenticity of political spectacle, but resigned to it, because, whatever. Yet, as disenchantment has settled over his presidency, the Enchanter in Chief must get an enthusiastic vibe going. Which is to say that the wonky incrementalist must pass himself off as a man of big vision and jump over a giant believability gap that has opened in the last six years.
The State of the Union, we’re told, is his last big chance.
The SOTU was born out of a vague mandate in the Constitution that the President check in with Congress from “time to time.” Jefferson didn’t like the spoken delivery, feeling it too imperial, but Wilson brought the custom back. Truman turned the address into a televised spectacle, and Bill Clinton brought it to the web.
So now we’re stuck with it. Officially, Congress is the audience. But the real audience is the American public. Just now, that particular public is not overly thrilled with President Obama, whose job approval rating stands at 43 percent.
Does the SOTU matter? To pundits who need to pundicate, sure. To the public, not so much. The public has a point. Obama talked about a lot of stuff in his 2013 SOTU, like a new jobs program and new gun controls, and Congress pretty much ignored him. He told those pesky politicians to set aside partisanship and work together to pass a budget. Several months later, the government shut down over a budget impasse. And so on.
Now, we’re led to believe that the president has big plans, yes, big plans indeed. He will even thumb his nose at Congress to get them done if need be. His plans include include raising wages to $10.10 for people making a miserly $7.25, the current Dickensian minimum. Oh, wait, he’s only talking about federal contract wages. OK, really only some of them. And only the new ones.
An income of $10.10 per hour falls short of a living wage. The plan does not even match the boldness of conservative California businessman Ron Unz, who wants to raise the minimum to $12 [3] because he doesn’t like having to pay for all the social welfare programs people have to rely on when they get paid squat.
If you were wanting something bold and butt-kicking, something that takes on inequality in America the way Lyndon B. Johnson took on poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address, you did not find it tonight.
You didn’t hear about expanding Social Security, a sensible plan supported by Sen. Elizabeth Warren and others. You didn’t hear about getting to full employment (but you did hear some conservative rhetoric about how unemployment is really about workers not having the right skills, which has been repeatedly debunked). You didn’t hear about bringing justice to criminal bankers who prey on hard-working Americas. You didn’t hear about asking the rich to pay their fair share in taxes, or putting a financial transaction tax on Wall Street, or backing off the grotesque Trans-Pacific Partnership, or ending too-big-to-fail, or taking real action to get the money out of politics.
Instead of tapping into the full power of the federal government to tackle our most urgent problems, Obama meekly suggested that government might, in certain cases, be obligated to do something. A little something. At some point.
He mentioned a new retirement savings proposal. If your employer doesn’t offer a retirement plan, which nowadays, usually consists of an inadequate 401(k), then you would be able to deduct a percentage of your paycheck to purchase Treasury bonds and eventually turn your account into an IRA. Congratulations. You are now stuck with a do-it-yourself retirement plan of the sort that has been not working out ever since somebody got the bright idea [4] that ordinary people could transform themselves into sophisticated money managers. The Economic Policy Institute recently released a study proving that do-it-yourself retirement is driving economic inequality, leaving regular Americans further behind than ever. But never mind.
Brian Graff, CEO of American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries, who has spoken with Treasury about the president’s retirement plan, shared his view with Politico[5]: “It’s not what I would describe as an earth-shattering move.” You can say that again.
Meanwhile, half the entire population is living at or near the poverty line, while the rich have never had it so good in America. But no biggie.
Obama’s theme tonight was America as the Land of Opportunity. “Opportunity is who we are. And the defining project of our generation is to restore that promise.”
OK, maybe not big opportunity. How about small opportunity? For some folks. Um, not really. Well, what did you want, a pony?
