Stuck between the rock and a hard place

Time and again one has to be reminded that politics exists in any nation because two or more groups have difference of opinions. Our President’s first State of the Union address last night proved just that. His portion of the speech where he mentioned about cutting taxes for 95% of working families did not enthrall the Republicans seated there. Many of the points he covered were the same as what he had said while addressing the Congress a year ago when he became the President. Many of the items that he mentioned during the first year were still not complete after his first year in office. To name a few: overhauling the health care system, enacted a market-based cap on carbon emissions blamed for climate change, imposed a new regulatory system on financial institutions, closed the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and signed a new arms control treaty with Russia. None of these were completed and still the topic of discussion for last night was health care reforms, energy and education.


To improve the economy of the country was the reason he came out with the stimulus plan. He sanctioned bailout dollars to keep the companies that were economically suffering from bankruptcy and keep the jobs open for the Americans. What were the results? The stimulus money that we got (even though a little to be even noticed in our paychecks) was used towards keeping our homes or paying the bills. Some were hoarding on to that money to be used later on in case people lost their jobs. That money was never spent to go back into the pool of growing economy of the country and keeping the businesses going. So the stimulus plan backfired.


Bailout money for banks is another story. 65% of the Americans believe that when banks got their share from the government, banks started to hold on to that money and stopped giving out loans to customers or small businesses because they knew that they will never see that money come back to them again. The idea was that the banks would give out loans to small businesses which in turn would create jobs and to keep the cycle of life flowing. To solve this problem, Obama is putting fees on banks now. He also talked about helping college students with their tuitions. Many students are waiting it out to finish their degree programs because what are they going to do after finishing their studies? Where are the jobs? Obama did not mention about how the job market is going to improve with the unemployment rate being at the highest ever – at 10% but he did mention about Recovery act to improve businesses.


Obama’s plan seemed to be fluid and we have to wait it out to see what will materialize successfully despite the fact that he mentioned about how long we have to wait to think about our future. There was also an issue about his numbers for lending to small businesses being different from when the aides previewed his speech to when the speech was actually delivered. With so many uncertainties and resistance he faces to complete anything that he had promised us to make our future better, to how we have to adjust our perception on the person we elected an year ago, one has to wonder who is stuck between the rock and a hard place – President or us?