Let's look at a few of his bullet points
OBAMA: "We have subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that's rarely been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that's never been more promising."
*** Contrary to what some in politics and the media have said, the oil and natural gas industry currently enjoys no unique tax credits or deductions. Since its inception, the US tax code has allowed corporate tax payers the ability to recover costs and to be taxed only on net income. These cost recovery mechanisms, also known in policy circles as “tax expenditures”, should in no way be confused with “subsidies”, i.e., direct government spending.
Here are a few of the items which are being incorrectly identified as “subsidies” inside the beltway:
Intangible Drilling Costs – Companies which engage purely in energy exploration and discovery can recover their costs related to exploration at tax time at a rate of 100%. This lessens the burden on energy providers for the number of “dry holes” which may be found in the process. Integrated companies (i.e. “big oil”) can recover these exploration costs at 70%. Not a subsidy.
Domestic Manufacturer’s Deduction (Section 199) – A deduction (not a credit) equal to 9% of income earned from manufacturing, producing, growing or extracting in the United States, is available to every single taxpayer who qualifies in the U.S. The oil and gas industry, and only the oil and gas industry, is limited to a 6% deduction.
Percentage Depletion – The percentage depletion deduction is a cost recovery method that allows taxpayers to recover their lease investment in a mineral interest through a percentage of gross income from a well. This depletion method is not available to companies that produce oil as well as refine and market it (i.e. “Big Oil”.) This is available to all extractive industries (gold, iron, clay, etc) in the US and is in no way unique to the oil and gas industry.
To be clear, the federal government does engage in the handing out of a lot of actual subsidies, including those for ethanol and a variety of wasteful programs which are essentially failures on their own merit without feeding off the teat of Uncle Sam. And we should certainly be looking at those areas as way to address cost cutting. But trying to depict tax credits used by the energy industry – in the same fashion as every other industry – as some sort of special love festival for Big Oil is dishonest.
If you want higher fuel prices just keep harping about "subsidizing big oil".
OBAMA: "Our health care law relies on a reformed private market, not a government program."
***He didn't say a whole lot on Obamacare because 2/3rds of the country don't want it.
OBAMA, asking Congress to pay for construction projects: "Take the money we're no longer spending at war, use half of it to pay down our debt, and use the rest to do some nation-building right here at home."
*** This is some kind of a twisted peace dividend budgetary transfer trick that only someone like Obama could craft. After 10 years of harping at George Bush for not raising taxes on the rich for to pay for the war on terror, NOW all of the sudden we are saving money? Transfer war deficit spending to construction deficit spending? great idea! And what was the 1 trillion ARRA for anyway?
OBAMA: "Through the power of our diplomacy a world that was once divided about how to deal with Iran's nuclear program now stands as one."
***You have got to be fucking kidding me! Does he really think his base is that stupid? Maybe they are.
Anyway maybe someone on his team should pick up the phone and call Vladimir Putin.
OBAMA: "Tonight, I want to speak about how we move forward, and lay out a blueprint for an economy that's built to last - an economy built on American manufacturing, American energy, skills for American workers, and a renewal of American values."
***Did he learn nothing from Steve Jobs? (see article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/business/apple-america-and-a-squeezed-middle-class.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all)
OBAMA: "The Taliban's momentum has been broken, and some troops in Afghanistan have begun to come home."
"Did I mention I got Osama?"
OBAMA: "On the day I took office, our auto industry was on the verge of collapse. Some even said we should let it die. With a million jobs at stake, I refused to let that happen. In exchange for help, we demanded responsibility. We got workers and automakers to settle their differences.
*** I shafted the stockholders and turned ownership over to the UAW all with taxpayers dollars!
OBAMA: "We can also spur energy innovation with new incentives. The differences in this chamber may be too deep right now to pass a comprehensive plan to fight climate change. But there's no reason why Congress shouldn't at least set a clean energy standard that creates a market for innovation."
THE FACTS: With this statement, Obama was renewing a call he made last year to require 80 percent of the nation's electricity to come from clean energy sources by 2035, including nuclear, natural gas and so-called clean coal. He did not put that percentage in his speech but White House background papers show that it remains his goal.
But this Congress has yet to introduce a bill to make that goal a reality, and while legislation may be introduced this year, it is unlikely to become law with a Republican-controlled House that loathes mandates.
OBAMA: "Right now, because of loopholes and shelters in the tax code, a quarter of all millionaires pay lower tax rates than millions of middle-class households."
***Damn straight! Eat the rich!
OBAMA: "We can't bring back every job that's left our shores.... Tonight, my message to business leaders is simple: Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and your country will do everything we can to help you succeed."
***Almost all of the 70 million iPhones, 30 million iPads and 59 million other products Apple sold last year were manufactured overseas.
Why can’t that work come home? Mr. Obama asked Steve Jobs over dinner at the Woodside, Calif., home of John Doerr, the venture capitalist and a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers..
Mr. Jobs’s reply was unambiguous. “Those jobs aren’t coming back,” he said.
It has been eye opening for Obama. He does realize that there may be limitations on certain manufacturing ever returning or coming to the US to begin with.
Reducing the corporate tax rate would help but fat chance at that happening.
OBAMA: "Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned doesn't know what they're talking about ... That's not how people feel from Tokyo to Berlin; from Cape Town to Rio; where opinions of America are higher than they've been in years."
THE FACTS: Obama left out Arab and Muslim nations, where popular opinion of the U.S. appears to have gone downhill or remained unchanged after the spring 2011 reformist uprisings in the Middle East. A Pew Research Center survey in May found that in predominantly Muslim countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Pakistan, views of the U.S. were worse than a year earlier. In Pakistan, a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid that went unmentioned in Obama's speech, just 11 percent of respondents said they held a positive view of the United States.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20120125/D9SFO48G0.html