You may have heard the joke: What's the difference between Groundhog Day and the State of the Union address? One features a yearly ritual in which a confused mammal comes out in the cold to say nothing. The other involves Punxsutawney Phil.
President Obama wasted his first SOTU address on juvenile shout-outs to his mortified first lady and an unprecedented tongue-lashing of the Supreme Court for its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. All in all, Furry Phil made a better showing. He correctly predicted the length of winter, he didn't insult anyone or blur the separation of powers, and he cost American taxpayers nothing.
The world’s most celebrated marmot can’t foretell what will take place in the Capitol on the evening of Jan. 25, however. The president may be sophomoric or sober, contemptuous or conciliatory. His unprecedented performance in 2010 suggests that he first saw his text at the same moment it was released to the press corps, 30 minutes before air time. He may not know what he’s going to say this year until he gets his lines from the teleprompter. Still we can be certain that three things will not happen.
First, no incumbent Republican legislator will be anything but saccharine. In September, 2009, as the president spoke to a joint session of Congress about the healthcare takeover, Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted, “You lie!” For this factual comment, Wilson got a reprimand from the House, and his party got another beating from the government-media complex. Although adversarial journalists found no fault with Obama and his claque for their treatment of the six robed justices at the last SOTU gathering, they bravely condemned Samuel Alito for shaking his head in disbelief. Having been reminded again that Republicans must be circumspect whatever anyone else does, GOP leaders may encourage their colleagues to sit at attention, applaud on cue, and file out singing “I Love You” from Barney & Friends.
Because Democrats hold themselves to no standard of decorum, there’s no telling how they’ll behave. They booed Republicans who turned up at Sen. Paul Wellstone’s memorial service in 2002. They heckled
Bush 43 during many of his SOTU addresses, most outrageously in 2004–2006. Some on the left fringe of the Democratic Party have recently gotten very upset with Obama. Legislators who whooped their approval of his unseemly jabs at the Supreme Court last year may try to shout him down in three weeks.Second, the president will not be brief. His only well-known rivals in expansiveness are Third World bores such as Fidel Castro.
Third, the president will not propose a meaningful solution to any of our myriad economic and financial problems. In fact, he won’t dare mention these problems.
The national debt roughly equals the GDP ($14 trillion), and it has been growing faster for years. Much of our debt is held by competitors, e.g., the European Union; antagonists, e.g., the OPEC countries; and enemies, e.g., China. The total debt of state and local governments is about $3 trillion. The federal government can’t bail them out; it needs a bailout itself.
Social Security has reached the stage where private-sector pyramid schemes collapse and grand juries convene. The trust fund is empty except for government IOUs. All the real money it takes in goes right out again—minus waste, fraud, theft, and overhead—as checks to current beneficiaries. Congress has made no provision for eventual payments to present-day contributors. The unfunded obligations of this program added to those of Medicare and Medicaid come to roughly $108 trillion. The unfunded obligations of state and local entitlement programs are another $3 trillion.
In brief, if federal, state, and local governments shut down this very minute, their combined obligations over the next 75 years, $128 trillion, would equal nine years of the current GDP. But no government will shut down or reduce spending. The most radical cost-cutters in all officialdom can hardly bear to suggest reducing the growth of spending. The few actual spending reductions put forward so far are merely symbolic.
We can’t spend, tax, or grow our way out of this mess. The total value of all privately held real estate in the United States is only around $20 trillion, and foreigners already own sizable pieces of that. If we sold the rest of the country from beneath our feet, we couldn’t cover one-sixth of what we owe. The only solutions are extreme austerity, hyperinflation, and default. The first will cause a domestic revolt that will make the upheavals in Greece and the U.K. look like flag football. The others will cause a domestic revolt and a global depression.
The president will never admit any of this. If he did so convincingly, he’d have to flee the country.
Now that I’ve saved all but a few masochists from two hours of tedium and spin, I suggest renting Ground Hog Day from Netflix. It’s almost as repetitive as the proceedings in the House chamber, and it will do no more to avert our approaching doom; but it’s a great deal more entertaining.
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