In a post from Jan. 21, I attempted to predict with mild success what President Obama would say in his first State of the Union address on Wednesday.
In the address Obama sternly and optimistically pushed for bipartisanship by asking Congress to put aside their differences and focus on jobs and the economy, the need to pass health care reform, tackling the deficit and national security. I predicted correctly Obama would use the forum as a call to arms for bipartisanship to pass important legislation like the health care bill. I was partially correct about Obama pointing to the success statistics of the Recovery Act. Instead of focusing on the numbers, he told stories of the people and businesses the act helped.
While I was correct on some of the themes of the address, I failed in predicting the specifics of how he would go about making his points. I also failed in noting a few major points of the address, like job creation, on what Obama needed to focus.
The spending freeze in Huntington government may help ease some of the city’s financial woes. According to a WOWK story from Jan. 11, the freeze will not affect new hiring and will not cut all spending. Now, purchases have to go through the mayor's office rather than just the department heads and the finance directors.
Mayor Kim Wolfe proposed the spending freeze, not a new initiative for the city, a few months earlier than usual to help ease the city’s budget problems. In an article from the Herald Dispatch dated Jan. 10, Brandi Jacobs-Jones, director of administration and finance, said last year’s freeze resulted in approximately $1 million in savings.
To fully understand the situation in the city, it is important to examine the facts and the situation. Huntington W.Va. according to the U.S. Census bureau has an approximate population of 49,000 and covers 15 square miles. The total revenue estimate for the current fiscal year 2010 is $41,064,610, and the previous 2009 revenue estimate was $38,758,863. In contrast, the expenditure estimates for fiscal years 2010 and 2009 were $42,135,417 and 39,990,304, respectively. Both years show a projected estimate loss of approximately $1 million.
According to the Huntington city budget Huntington’s two biggest tax revenue sources are the business and occupation tax with approximately $16 million and the municipal service fees with approximately $5 million. The biggest expenditures for the city are the police and fire departments, which cost the city approximately $10.5 million and $9.5 million, respectively. Combined, the fire and police department make up for almost 50 percent of the expenditures of the city’s budget.
In a statement aimed to lull faculty and staff, Marshall University President Stephen Kopp declared the university is working to thrive with the 3.4 percent reduction in state appropriations. Kopp said the university is pursuing programs in the health care industry, such as pharmacy and physical therapy, to accommodate a growing demand in the field, attract and retain students and help meet budgetary restraints. Kopp said using some programs like the endowment based research program, which once funded will be self-sustaining, and the newly formed Sustainability Department, which is monitoring the university’s efficiency and waste, will help with budgetary issues. With this announcement Kopp is trying to let the faculty and staff know the university is trying to improve the current situation in the face of budgetary cuts and the new freeze on tuition. This statement was probably a reaction to calm fears of further departmental cuts within the university.
2010 State of the Union: A Preview of possibilities
As President Obama is planning to give his first true State of the Union address on Jan. 27 to a joint session of Congress, some themes may be expected in his speech.
Though it may be difficult to predict everything the president will discuss, some common themes that have been coming from the White House and the president himself in speeches since his presidency began can be expected.
The address has historically been a forum for sitting presidents to tout their successes, to talk about their future plans and budget and as an agenda setting platform of the president for the House and Senate. President Obama delivered a State of the Union address in 2009, but since he had only been in the White House briefly, it was not considered a true State of the Union address.
Obama may use the forum to call for unity in completing common goals like President Gerald Ford did in his Jan. 15, 1975 address when facing hard economic times.
“We can do this by fashioning a new partnership between the Congress on the one hand, the White House on the other, and the people we both represent, “ Ford said. “Let us mobilize the most powerful and most creative industrial nation that ever existed on this Earth to put all our people to work.”
Without the ability to tout the great success of health care reform passage, Obama may have to use the “Ford method” as a call to arms for bi-partisanship. Since Democrats recently lost their super majority due to the loss of the Massachusetts Senate race to replace Ted Kennedy’s seat, which they had been relying on to get the health care reform bill passed without a filibuster, President Obama is likely to speak about the need for bi-partisanship and partnership between Congress and the presidency in efforts to pass important legislation like the health care bill.
As it was during President Ford’s presidency, the state of the economy has been a major issue in the U.S. for several years now, and Obama will undoubtedly speak of his successes and future plans of improving the economy.
The U.S. Government’s official Web site used to track the money spent through the grants, loans and contracts of the economic stimulus package has a ticker boasting the 640,329 jobs created or saved and a bar graph showing over $158 billion already awarded in funds. Obama will most likely cite these figures as a measure of how he is working to help the economy.
Spending is one theme, but the Obama White House has been mentioning plans to cut the deficit in the near future, so he may outline some plans to accomplish this goal. Peter Orszag, White House budget director, gave the following statement to POLITICO.
“The President strongly believes that as the recovery strengthens and job growth returns, we will have to take the tough steps necessary to return our nation to a fiscally disciplined and sustainable path,” Orszag said, “We recognize that the projected medium-term deficits are too high, and as part of the FY 2011 budget process, we are committed to bringing them down.”
One topic in deficit reduction President Obama may discuss is his plan to appoint a bi-partisan panel to produce a deficit reduction plan. According to a Jan. 20, 2010 Associated Press article in the Los Angeles Times, Obama has shown the White House is willing to work towards dealing with the deficit this year. It also stated the panel allows him show compromise without offering specifics that would offend key interest groups.
On Jan. 17 President Obama announced he had told White House aides and federal agencies to not give any new work to government contractors who had not paid taxes. Citing studies by the Government Accountability Office, President Obama said such contractors owed $5 billion in taxes. Though $5 billion is a nothing compared to the $1.3 trillion deficit an article in The New York Times said the administration inherited, it seems likely President Obama will point to such initiatives as efforts to combat the deficit.
History repeats itself, and the major issues facing the U.S. today have already happened and will happen again.
President Obama just announced he would deliver his first true State of the Union address on Jan. 27, 2010. In preparation for his address, I have compiled a few common themes past presidents have discussed in their State of the Union addresses and researched some of President Obama’s recent speeches in an effort to predict what he will discuss. Here is some of my research in preparation for the address.
President Obama in a recent speech
While it may not be a surprise to anyone who has not been living under a rock for the past year to know what some of the major problems facing the U.S. are today, looking at one of the most recent speeches President Obama gave on Jan. 18 at a campaign rally for the open senate seat in Massachusetts can give us some insight into what he will be discussing. The themes he discussed about the senate candidate Martha Coakley were health care reform, financial regulatory reform and clean energy.
President Gerald Ford
Some of the themes from the State of the Union address President Gerald Ford delivered on Jan. 15, 1975 sound familiar to some issues the U.S. is still facing today. Ford’s presidency was plagued with recession and a gas shortage. The gas shortage prompted President Ford to speak of the need to lessen our dependence on foreign energy sources and our economic stability.
“Our growing dependence upon foreign sources has been adding to our vulnerability for years and years,” President Ford said. “And we did nothing to prepare ourselves for such an event as the embargo of 1973.”
He proposed plans to cut the U.S.’s dependency on foreign oil and to boost the U.S.’s own energy sources to have a surplus capacity in total energy to assure reliable energy and stability.
While we hear some of the same themes in Obama’s rhetoric, his is more focused on producing clean energy, not only for stability, but also for environmental reasons.
President Ronald Reagan
In his State of the Union from Jan. 26, 1982, President Reagan discussed economic problems and the need to work together to solve the problems the country was facing at the time. One interesting line from his speech echoed similar lines we have heard from Obama.
“This time, however, things are different. We have an economic program in place, completely different from the artificial quick fixes of the past,” Reagan said.
He is remaining optimistic and saying we are doing something to fix the problem, but it is going to take some time. He is urging the audience to hang in there and to not expect a quick fix. Throughout his presidency, Obama has consistently said our economic situation in the U.S. would not be fixed over night. In his speech at the campaign rally in Massachusetts on January 18, Obama brought up this again.
“People are frustrated and they are angry, and they have every right to be,” Obama said. “I understand; because progress is slow and no matter how much progress we make, it can't come fast enough for the people who need help right now, today.”
President George H. W. Bush
An entire Paragraph from President George H. W. Bush’s State of the Union from Jan. 29, 1991 resonates with the issues the nation is currently facing.
“A comprehensive national energy strategy that calls for energy conservation and efficiency, increased development, and greater use of alternative fuels; a banking reform plan to bring America's financial system into the 21st century so that our banks remain safe and secure and can continue to make job-creating loans for our factories, our businesses, and home buyers,” Bush said.
Nearly twenty years later, the themes Bush discussed are all issues with which we are currently dealing, and President Obama will probably discuss them on Jan. 27.
In his Jan. 19, 2010 State of the State address, Gov. Joe Manchin described what he called eye-opening statistics on the state of higher education in West Virginia.
“Amazingly, the United States and Germany are the only western democracies in which parents are more likely to have earned a college degree than their children,” Manchin said. “And in West Virginia, for every 100 ninth graders in school today, statistics tell us only 16 will graduate from college.”
While discussing many of the problems West Virginia is facing in education, Manchin offered little, if any, ideas for resolving the problems of retention in higher education institutions. Manchin’s only direct advice to technical, four-year colleges and universities was to freeze tuition rates.
“Learning additional skills beyond high school is more critical than ever for West Virginians,” he said. “That is why I am asking all of our technical and four-year colleges and universities to freeze their tuition rates for the coming school year.”
The more times I read this statement, the more it confuses and confounds me. So, I ask, what is the goal with this request?
While this may be a small relief for many students’ wallets, it is yet to be seen if keeping the tuition rates at their current level would do anything to help the retention rates of West Virginia’s universities, four-year colleges and technical schools. It could be argued that the difference between a few hundred dollars will do little to encourage or dissuade current students from completing their educations.
As in previous State of the State addresses, Manchin has once again figuratively patted the state on the back for a job well done and told West Virginians to roll up their sleeves and work with what is available. Manchin said he recently required state agencies, including universities, four-year colleges and technical schools, to cut their budgets by 3.4 percent.
According to an article in The State Journal, university officials blame recent tuition increases on declining state funding for higher education. When the universities lose expected funds with budget cuts, they are forced to find the funds elsewhere, and tuition hikes can be a solution to the problem. With budget cuts and a tuition freeze, Marshall University will have fewer options to expand and grow the university to attract and retain students.
As a senior at Marshall University, I have noticed fewer and fewer options of courses. In my search for courses this semester I noticed courses filling up faster and fewer options in upper division courses fitting my schedule and requirements. There were over 25 English 101 courses available. This illustrates that there is a great difference between the number of first-year students and junior and seniors. Though most of the English 101 courses are full, this also shows the university has been able to provide more than enough of the 101 classes required by everyone to incoming students. But, for those trying to fill their requirements to graduate, classes seem to be growing scarcer.
Further budgetary cuts and the tuition freeze could prevent Marshall from giving students options. Even if a tuition freeze helped with retention, which I doubt, adding more students to the full upper-level courses would make it even more difficult for students to get into the courses needed to meet requirements.
While this example is one of many negative effects of budgetary cuts, it epitomizes the problems the university may face with fewer funds available than necessary to operate the university. It is also one reason why freezing tuition will not help with retention. Students need more course options, not fewer, to have a more fulfilling education. Students may become discouraged if they are forced to take a certain course simply because it meets the requirements and is the only one that will fit into a semester’s schedule.
If retention rates are a concern for the governor, perhaps working with universities, technical schools and four-year colleges to come up with coherent plans and offering incentives for retention rate improvement would be more beneficial than freezing tuition rates and saying it is to help retention.
Senior online journalism major, Marshall University. Welcome to my thoughts.
As a journalism major, I was required to start a blog to post assignments for a reporting public affairs class. I had previously created Appalachian Refugee in hopes I would have something to say. This class is giving me that opportunity.
