I wanted to share with you my thoughts on the President’s State of the Union address Wednesday night.
President Obama tried to establish himself as a centrist by promoting a spending freeze (even if it was just on a small portion of so-called discretionary spending), nuclear power plants, and (albeit limited) offshore drilling.
The President also played to his base by promising that he would continue to push the healthcare bill - implying that people still don’t understand it or that he hasn’t done a good enough job of selling it.
He’s wrong to think people don’t understand it. The truth is, the more people learn about the bill, the more they don’t like it. On
earmarks, the President advocated for more transparency.
Specifically, he wants members of Congress to post earmark requests on a central website before the vote.
This, frankly, wouldn’t change much.
The President just signed a bill with more than 9,000 earmarks. Most of them were known before the vote, but it was an up or down vote for all of them, with no ability for members of Congress to challenge each earmark individually. That’s the problem. All said, I was a little surprised the President didn’t pivot more to the center in his speech. With mid-term elections this year, I suspect we’ll see a more tempered approach on some issues, but nonetheless we must be vocal and aggressive in airing our ideas and direction for country. We must be ready to provide voters with a clear choice.
Thanks for your continued support. If you had an opportunity to watch the speech last night, I hope you’ll reply to this email and share your thoughts with me.
Best,
Jeff Flake
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