So I didn’t actually watch the State of the Union address, other than the Dikembe Mutombo moment. Veronica Mars had a monkey to find, Alabama was playing Auburn in basketball … Plus, I got out of political reporting a long time ago in part because I really can’t take speeches.
Still, I am capable of doing a text search, and so I did one on the speech a couple of minutes ago on the phrase “social security.” Here’s what I found:
Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience–and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty–and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits. Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true–yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act. So let us work together and do it now. With enough good sense and good will, you and I can fix Medicare and Medicaid–and save Social Security.
Hard to disagree with any of that. But given how brief the passage was, I took it as a declaration of surrender. Yeah, there was that “let us work together and do it now” line. But he didn’t really mean that, did he? This is going to be the next president’s problem. (And the one after that, and the one after that …)