President Barack Obama delivers the State of the Union address on Tuesday. (Photo: Larry Downing/Reuters)
Barack
Obama put on a deft performance Tuesday night. With trills of empathy,
the president’s voice soared to hit the high notes. He easily carried a
tune of economic populism. But after five years of Obama in the White
House, Americans should know by now that he was lip-syncing the words.
The latest State of the Union speech offered a faint echo of a call
for the bold public investment that would be necessary to reduce
economic inequity in the United States. The rhetoric went out to a
country that in recent years has grown even more accustomed to
yesterday’s floor becoming today’s ceiling.
The speech offered nothing that could plausibly reverse the trend of
widening income gaps. Despite Obama’s major drumroll about his executive
order to increase the minimum wage for some federal contract employees,
few workers would be affected. The thumping was loud, but the action
was small.
Obama of course blames congressional Republicans for obstructing
needed reforms — and they certainly deserve blame. But for Americans
struggling to make ends meet, the record of the Obama administration is
littered with wreckage from its refusal to fight for people of modest
means.
During 2009 and 2010 — when Democrats controlled not only the White
House and Senate but also the House — Obama skipped past vital options
for working and want-to-be-working Americans. For instance, he never
really pushed for the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have helped
unions regain footing and halt their downward slide of membership,
especially after crackdowns in state legislatures in Wisconsin, Michigan
and elsewhere.
In a huge blow to the largest unionized workforce in the country —
U.S. Postal Service employees — the Obama administration did nothing to
undo the extreme pension-prefunding rules that were imposed during the
last two years of the George W. Bush administration. And now the Obama
White House is presiding over waves of privatization of USPS assets and
services, with grave consequences for its workers and the public.
In his speech, while Obama presented himself as an ally of federal
workers, he neglected to mention something quite relevant: At the end of
2010, he signed a bill that prohibited pay increases for most of the
federal government’s civilian employees. The pay freeze had come at his
initiative.
Conflicted priorities
More broadly, Obama never came close to embracing the scale of public
investment that would have been necessary to truly move toward a strong
and equitable economy.
It was clear in 2009 that the incoming president would get one major
bite of the stimulus apple. Obama chose not to go for a big enough bite.
As a tragic result, the job-creating stimulus package was too small and
too fleeting to sustain a strong recovery.
But the size of the stimulus was only part of the problem. Obama, it
turned out, was not interested in much public investment via government
programs. Instead of developing a modern New Deal that would enable
public works to create large numbers of long-term jobs, the Obama team
routinely funneled the federal spending to private companies.
In his speech, Obama used the term ‘middle class’ five times. But he had nothing of substance to say about America’s poor.
Now, entering his sixth presidential year — after doing much for Wall
Street and little for the nonwealthy — Obama has used the State of the
Union to burnish himself as a champion of working people. But top
economic officials in his Cabinet belie the pose.
Treasury Secretary Jack Lew is a former top executive at Citigroup,
where he ran a unit that profited from the housing collapse. The same
collapse was also very good to Obama’s current commerce secretary, Penny
Pritzker, a Chicago billionaire who profited handsomely from banking
operations that methodically targeted low-income people for subprime
mortgages. (By the way, Pritzker was the national finance chair for
Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and a co-chair of his 2012 campaign.)
The president’s 2014 State of the Union, of course, hit all the right
populist notes. He lauded “middle class” Americans who “work hard and
take responsibility.”
Earlier in the day, the Democratic National Committee distributed
talking points to its members, featuring this headline: “The President
& Democrats Acting to Build a Stronger Middle Class.”
Limited-opportunity agenda
In his speech, Obama used the term “middle class” five times. But he
had nothing of substance to say about America’s poor, despite the fact
that nearly 50 million people — almost 1 in 6 — are living below the
official U.S. poverty line.
“The Obama administration seems to have very little concern about
poor people and their social misery,” African-American scholar and
activist Cornel West said in November 2010. More than three years later,
Obama’s record does little to refute such assessments.
Like West, I was a hopeful supporter of Barack Obama during his first
campaign for president. In fact, I was an Obama delegate to the 2008
Democratic National Convention. But his corporate affinities and lack of
interest in genuine structural change to the U.S. economy have long
since become painfully clear.
On Wednesday, The New York Times headlined a bold-sounding statement
from his State of the Union address: “Whenever I can take steps without
legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s
what I’m going to do.” But such noble barking from President Obama has
rarely had much bite.
Opportunity for American families is badly circumscribed by many
policies that Obama has shown no interest in changing — such as huge
military budgets that drain vast amounts of badly needed resources away
from domestic needs. And he could expand opportunity for American
families by removing Treasury’s Lew and Commerce’s Pritzker from his
Cabinet, which remains well stocked with officials who have long
functioned in sync with the predatory elites of Wall Street.
Obama’s continuing allegiance to those elites is one of the great
tragedies of our era. He knows how to give speeches that impress many
pundits and power brokers. But no amount of lofty oratory can make up
for a presidency that continues to boost extreme disparities between the
rich and the rest of us.
© 2014 Al-Jazeera America
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