GorT Replicant #1 had an assignment from school to watch the President’s speech last night and describe what his plan was.  After GorT stopped laughing, I dutifully sat down and watched the speech with her and Mrs. GorT.  If you didn’t follow the live tweet-mocking and take downs of the speech last night, it’s worth going back and looking at them.  It made that roughly 45 minutes more enjoyable to read the tweets from our followers and those we follow.  From our intel sources, we get the beginning of the democrat spin on the speech:

Tonight, President Obama laid out his plan to kick-start the American economy and create up to a million new jobs here at home.

A group of Tea Party lawmakers elected to skip their President’s address tonight. But what those Republicans missed out on, the American people saw first hand: a bold, new strategy to turn the country around, and a President who is answering the call of working and middle class Americans who deserve action.

Now all we’re waiting for is the Republicans: Will they double down on the GOP’s blind obstructionism of the last three years? Or will they set politics aside and embrace a job creation plan that pulls ideas from across the political spectrum?

Courtesy of the Democrat Legilstive Campaign Committee

First, neither the speech nor it’s delviery was bold.  The president rode the “pass this bill” theme so hard, it became more of a punch line than a memorable speech line.  As the Czar pointed out (and called early), he had botched jokes and other deliveries that clearly expected applause when none was received.

Second, the plan is nothing new.  Really.  It has a handful of GOP ideas (tax cuts and incentives for businesses), which the president is right we should pass and the GOP should support.  And democrat ideas (extensions of jobless benefits, investing in infrastructure projects) that have been around before including in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Remember the “Summer of Recovery”?  Shovel-ready jobs?  He basically asked for another $450B stimulus plan with the caveat of no earmarks.  Just like he said the ARRA wouldn’t have earmarks either and we know how that went down (just search for the tag “Pork-filled Stimulus Bill tag” here).

Third, we have to be very careful here.  Many pundits are claiming that the president said that everything in this bill of his (which one might question whether he actually presented a bill or rather the concept of a bill) is paid for.  The president actually said, “everything in this bill will be paid for, everything.”  This is where it gets slippery.  He defers some of it to the “super committee” – which I think, right here and now, we should stop calling it the “super committee”.  There’s nothing “super” about it.  It’s 12 congressmen – 2.2% of all of the congress.  They’ve done NOTHING since being named and will likely be more political than pragmatic.  Obama promises that in a week he’ll deliver specifics on additional cuts but he later heavily implies that, aside from “modest adjustments” to Medicare, entitlement programs will remain untouched.  Those programs are what is consuming and will continue to consume our budget.  Yes, the federal government could be trimmed, but does anyone expect Obama to touch the public sector benefits, retirement, etc. for savings?  Finally, he’s going to pay for this by raising taxes on the wealthy – while not explicit, he made it pretty clear:

While most people in this country struggle to make ends meet, a few of the most affluent citizens and most profitable corporations enjoy tax breaks and loopholes that nobody else gets…we need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake and everyone pays their fair share…
…reforming our tax code in a way that asks the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share…
Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary, an outrage he has asked us to fix. We need a tax code where everyone gets a fair shake and where everybody pays their fair share.

He claims this is “simple math” and not class warfare.  Really?  Everyone pay their fair share but then propose that the wealthy should pay more.  Asks the wealthiest?  The last time I looked, the tax code doesn’t ask anything – it spells out what you MUST pay.  More in pure dollars, more in a percentage of income, more as a percentage of the federal tax burden.  What’s “fair” about that.  We’ve covered this before (remember, ‘Puter’s always right) too. 

Finally, he pitched that the country doesn’t have the luxury to wait for this help while this speech and pitch waited two weeks while the president had a luxury vacation and his cuts can wait another week.  The left will prop this up and try to use it to bolster Obama’s poll numbers.  This was the start of his 2012 campaigning.  It will falter.  The American public will see this speech as more political rhetoric.  The GOP should clearly spell out the shortcomings of this plan.  Early and often.  Agree that we need to work together, but point out the demographic and funding number problems of why we can’t keep doing things the way Obama is preaching.

While GorT replicant #1 wrote down a few of the proposals, I think even as a high school freshman, she saw that it wasn’t all that compelling.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.