Dear editor:

The State of the Union speech last night lasted over an hour and contained the word “debt” nine times. There was one reference to personal debt, another on bad debt, one for tuition debt and one for credit card debt. The other five times the word debt was uttered, I think it referred to national debt.

In those five references to national debt, only two offered a plan to lower our debt. That was when President Obama talked about spending half of the revenue formerly spent on the Iraqi war on the debt and half on infrastructure.  Once, he spoke about taxing the rich to pay down the debt.  The other time he spoke about national debt, he used it in the phrase, “taxes, debt, energy and health care.” I don’t know what that meant.

How can a president give a state of the union speech, speak for an hour and almost totally ignore the largest threat to this country? If I may answer my own question, it’s because President Obama has no solution and can’t defend his stewardship of this country over the last three years. The Democratic Senate has not even passed a budget in those three years.

I think President Obama has concluded that he cannot lower the debt so he plans to distract us with his plan to tax the rich. That’s dishonest and it won’t work. We need something more serious than that to balance our books and restore our fiscal integrity.

Shame on President Obama.

Mitch Daniels in about 12 minutes gave the best rebuttal in years to the State of the Union. Congratulations to Governor Daniels.

Michael L. Waldron
Niles