Tonight, we will hear the annual State of the Union, 9:00 pm EST, from Biden. We know what we will not hear: The Union is wobbly, weak, and worried, just like the President. A man who visibly signals frailty, indecision, dissembling, faux machismo, struggles for orientation and cogency, no respect for truth – cannot inspire.
He will be flanked by a vice president no less embarrassing who regularly giggles at serious matters, enthuses at nonsense, yellow school busses and spaceships, cannot find the US border, and thinks North Korea is America’s ally.
Worse, we are in the grips of half a dozen major crises, none of which will be acknowledged – if mentioned at all in terms of dishonesty and disrespect of the struggles Americans face. Truth is a casualty.
Major crimes – homicide, assault, carjacking, property destruction – set records in dozens of cities nationwide, as Democrats continue to disrespect, defund, and demoralize law enforcement – no contrition, no compunction, not understanding of what they are doing.
The border is literally open, Biden-Harris offering an invitation of future global citizenship, illegals pouring across in caravans, clogging cities from New York to Los Angeles, still shipped secretly to hundreds of cities and towns unable to manage them.
Downstream effects are predictable and horrifying – record human, sex, and drug trafficking – ruining young lives by the hundreds of thousands, those trafficked, raped, enlisted as mules, addicted, killed.
The straight-line effect of Biden-Harris’ disrespect for rule of law and indifference to America’s citizens -broadly construed – is the body of incontrovertible, revolting facts. Last year saw 108,000 young Americans dead from drug overdoses, youth unemployment at 11.2 percent in July 2022, and youth suicide attempts and suicides for teens – and pre-teens – at a “startling” level.
But you will not hear any of this because these facts are inconvenient, unimportant, and embarrassing. They describe a White House and Administration in disarray, unfocused on what matters. The data gets worse…
Despite presidential lies and misdirection, the economy is in freefall, racked by more than 31 trillion dollars in debt, unable to pay bills, and yet spending is at utterly unsustainable levels. Successive Biden-Harris-Pelosi-Schumer deficits that boggle the mind.
In Fiscal Year 2022 (October 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022), the Administration and Congress spent $6.27 trillion on revenue of $4.9 trillion, creating a needless $1.38 trillion in deficit spending, which means more borrowing and printing of money we do not have – spiking inflation and interest rates. The US government previously – under Biden – ran a $2.8 trillion deficit for fiscal year 2021.
What will you hear? You will hear the lie – or mischaracterization of these facts – that Biden-Harris lowered the deficit from FY 2021 to FY2022 by $1.42 trillion. Is that true? Only in fantasyland.
The same will happen on inflation, up 500 percent since Biden took office, higher on some goods and services, intolerable for many struggling to pay for heating oil, home rental, commuting gas, basic groceries, and used cars. It edged down since the high last summer, after years of being low.
What will you hear? You will hear the dissembling, dishonest, dis-informative statement that inflation is down, or has come down, or that it was always here, or other data is more important. Like what?
As pension values, wages, and savings plummet in real value – between 8 and 10 percent a year – we will hear Social Security rose. Yes, but not at a level that keeps up with 2023 inflation, always a day late and a dollar short, and no effort at all to keep solvent a system that will crack open mid-2030s. No honesty.
Likewise, interest rates – which are being raised in a vain attempt to catch up with runaway congress and Biden-Harris spending – have risen seven times since Biden took office, four times in 2022, up 7.5 basis points, and we are expecting at least two more hikes.
What does that really mean? It means hardship – your credit cards, home loan, car loan, any debt you have that is variable, all future debt will rise markedly. You will pay more for all those businesses also facing higher interest. And interest on the $31 trillion national debt – much held by China? Also up.
National security? Think Chinese military ramp-ups, Russian audacity, 20 times the North Korean missile launches as in the prior administration, Iran on the verge of nuclear weapons because Biden bumbled, still tens of thousands of US allies stuck in Afghanistan, being systematically hunted down by the Taliban, that Biden-Harris have now given tens of millions of dollars, to go with billions in weapons left there.
Do not even begin talking cultural demise. Christians being thrown out of the Air & Space Museum for wearing Pro-Life hats, Satanic clubs given moral equivalency in schools, pro-life, pro-biological girl, anti-CRT, and anti-Marxist parents and speakers targeted as terrorists, set up for take down, arrested, humiliated, intimidated – and a Supreme Court Justice who cannot define “women.”
What is the State of the Union? Retrievable, able to be rebuilt with love, faith, and leadership – but presently? In trouble, as a result of stunning dishonesty, incompetence, and failed policies. In a word, the State of the Union is hardly strong. Wobbly, weak, and worried is a better description.
Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.