As per Article II of the Constitution, the President is required to present a report on the state of the union before Congress. Congress invites the President to make that address usually shortly after the new Congressional session begins. This year there is talk around the halls of congress that they will, in fact, not invite the President to make that address before Congress [ I suppose if this happens, it will revert to the written form usual before the days of radio and  television ]. If true, it would not surprise me as the 113th Congress , in addition to failing to govern across the board, took a most intensive obstructionist position on virtually everything in the president’s agenda. both domestic and foreign. This all began on the very evening of the inaugural in 2009 and continued to the seating of the 114th Congress. I suppose we shall see just what the president offers as his “State of the Union” . However, allow a different take on it based on this observer’s assessment.

The year 2014 has mercifully come to an end and the GOP House has accomplished little or nothing, having worked less than one hundred and ninety days, except continuing the hard obstructionism which began on the very night of the President’s first inaugural in 2009. We have endured six years of this agenda and sadly, there does not appear to be any end in sight.
The GOP Administration of 200 – 2008 left us with an economic picture dangling dangerously close to complete Depression and the amnesia continues. The economy has indeed improved but the benefits of that rather slight recovery have been mostly for the upper ten percent while most are still trying to manage in minimum wage jobs. The so called job creation statistics, much like the unemployment figures are not reality based nor do they reflect the bulk of those underemployed nor do they make note that much of the alleged job creation numbers are in fact part time jobs. The “official” unemployment figure is now around 5.6% while in truth, the unemployment if far higher, such as in Arizona where the calculation is, according to independent sources, closer to 16 %.

The agenda for the 113th congress, as per the senator from Kentucky, was to be certain that this administration was a one term administration and so the blocking of any and all domestic policy was set.
In spite of the economic circumstances, a major jobs bill, passed by the Senate in 2011, was still sitting in Rules as of the close of the 113th, with the Speaker vowing it would never get a vote as long as he was speaker. So much for any progress in not only the jobs which would have been created but the vast amount of infrastructure rep[airs which are so desperately needed. The House, during the 113th , sent sixteen bills to the Senate for action, all titled jobs bills when in reality they were nothing more than deregulation actions. So much for making real strides in the employment picture, not to mention any semblance of community renewal.
Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010 and, while the managing of its implementation was just sort of a disaster, the intent to bring access to health care to millions who, to this point, could not afford it, was a most laudable pursuit. The GOP controlled House did, in its own obstructionist way, draft and pass legislation to repeal this legislation no less than fifty-two times, wasting time and tax payer money on this obsession, denying so many the health care which damn near every other industrialized nation provides to their citizenry. And to add insult to injury, this obsession filtered down to the GOP controlled states as well, supported by a mindless decision rendered by the Supreme Court which allowed states to opt out of Medicaid Expansion, an integral part of the ACA. Sadly, that battle continues and the fate of this historic attempt to afford health care to so many is shaky at best. One item is the proposal to add the requirement of a forty hour week being full time. This would mean that unless you work a forty hour week, your employer does not have to provide insurance coverage. Leaves the door open for employers to require a thirty-five hour week but still have no responsibility to provide insurance, forcing employees to turn to the health exchanges in their state for health care.

Akin to this craziness is the continuing attack on what are the two major safety nets for seniors – Medicare and Social Security. George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security and fortunately failed. In the 112th, Congressman Paul Ryan, then Chair of the House Budget Committee, tried to force a measure which would hand over social Security to Wall Street and make Medicare a private insurance package with a $ 15,000 annual cap. It likewise failed at the presidential level. He tried again and failed again in the 113th.
However, with the seating of the 114th Congress, the talk again is about privatizing Social Security and raising the eligibility age to sixty-eight and likewise Medicare, which would become a private voucher system having that same $15,000 cap.
Once again, the average worker is being attacked and denying access to health care for not only working class folk but also for seniors is being cast as a viable way to reduce the deficit – a deficit which, for the record, has been declining progressively for several years already. [ Even those on the Hill confuse the deficit with the debt]. Interestingly, this all began with a GOP effort spearheaded by Congressman Ryan who would not have gotten out of high school if it were not for social security benefits.
Mr. Ryan’s budget plans also call, in the name of reducing spending, the decimation of Pell Grants, serious cuts in the school lunch programs and major reductions in the budget for the newly created Office for Consumer Protection. In addition, the GOP strategy, while obsessively adhering to the supply side economic ideology of the Reagan era, will, as Mr Ryan loudly proclaims,not add any taxes to the upper ten per cent nor to corporations, many of which do not pay taxes at all. However, they will support a tar sands pipeline for a foreign oil company, gut the Environmental Protection Agency and fight hard to dilute, if not eliminate the controls levied by the Dodd-Frank Act, allowing the banks on Wall Street to return to their reckless banking practices which brought us to near collapse in the late nineties.

Fear indeed is warranted, not of attacks from foreign aggressors but from the complete disdain for the middle class – or what’s left of it – by this congress. One need only look at their agenda of the GOP, which now controls both houses of congress. One should be concerned about the agenda that we know and especially about the agenda we do not know
And before one goes ballistic about this rant against the GOP, it must be said there is plenty of blame for our circumstances on the other side of the aisle as well. Spineless is a word that comes to mind and as the GOP is obsessed with destroying this administration and everything it stands for, the Democrats are obsessed with trying to time after time find a way to back step and compromise their way out of what should be a serious fight. What little gains there have been are, in my opinion, a result of failure rather than as a result of successful governing and now that the GOP controls the House and the Senate, the Oval Office is the only thing standing between some level of sanity and a complete destruction of our way of life.
All in all, the state of the union is weak at best and on a road to complete chaos, indeed class warfare brought about by , if I may paraphrase President Eisenhower, the power grab by the industrial, military, and now banking complex. Sadly, when we had a chance to turn it around in the mid term elections of 2014, only 36% thought it important enough to vote and I submit most of them did so in ignorance of the stakes. 2016 is two years away but that , politically speaking, is a lifetime during which havoc in so many areas can be wreaked and we, all of us, will pay the price. Is that what it will take for us to wake up ??