Weekly Radio Address

It appears this will be a weekly occurrence, President-elect Obama’s weekly radio address has been posted on YouTube. I’ll post them all here under the topic heading, “Radio Address.” Here’s the video:

Our President-elect began by praising President Bush for initiating a meeting of the G-20 nations’ leaders to address the ever-growing global economic crisis. I don’t know what they’re going to accomplish. I’m going to hazard a guess that there will be a lot of finger-pointing and laying of blame. Most of those fingers will likely be pointed at the U.S., laying the blame on our country.

This is one pill the Democrats have always had a hard time swallowing–when you’re the most powerful nation on the face the Earth, the majority of the rest of the world is going to hate you. How many times have we heard them say we need to restore our world standing, make the world like us again? Ultimately, I expect these leaders to devise a plan to spend a lot more money on a lot more government programs and come away without really accomplishing a thing.

I was completely surprised to hear Obama say one thing though, Americans are going to have to sacrifice as we work ourselves out of this crisis. That said, I think his definition of sacrifice is different than mine. In my opinion, that sacrifice will involve driving older cars, living in smaller homes, eating out less, giving up luxury items like boats and other toys, not going on vacation, buying off-brand groceries and clothes, etc. I have all ideas his definition is to pay more taxes.

In fact, he rehashes part of his plan to work through this crisis that will require massive increases in government spending. His ideas sound similar to FDR‘s work programs of the Great Depression. The difference between then and now is the work ethic of the American people. In FDR’s time, we didn’t have the entitlement programs that encourage people not to work. It was either work or starve.

One thing I hear mentioned over and over is a plan to create jobs by rebuilding our transportation system. In my experience, there are a lot of people in this country who would rather sit at home, watch Oprah and draw a government check than work on a road construction crew. It’s hard, hot, and physical work.

He states that we’ve neglected rebuilding this infrastructure for far too long, but haven’t we all been inconvenienced by road construction on busy freeways? I’m just not buying this idea that we haven’t been addressing the problem of crumbing roads. I know in my state we’ve seen plenty of road construction that seemingly never ends.

I hope he can inspire the American people to truly make the sacrifices that will be required to not only survive this crisis, but to emerge from it with the same can-do spirit that our elders had. That spirit involved not only a willingness to work and achieve, but a desire to do so. In my opinion, that’s what we’ve lacked in this country for a long time. We have far too many people too willing to accept a hand-out instead of accepting a job. I’m afraid that spirit will never return as long as there’s a government check in the mailbox.

Another problem we’ll have to address if he implements this New Deal style program is the illegal alien situation. What good is it going to do American workers if the majority of these jobs go to illegals? And, if he implements it on anything close to the scale he’s indicating, we’re likely to see an increase in the number of illegals flooding our country in response. If this occurs, the problem will be compounded, not resolved.

I fear his recovery plan is flawed. Let’s not forget that Roosevelt’s measures didn’t end the Great Depression. In fact, the only thing they accomplished in the short term was to improve Americans’ morale. What finally pulled us out of the Depression was WWII and our role in the subsequent rebuilding of Europe and Japan. Hopefully it won’t take that to get us out of this mess.

Well, he’s going to get his chance. Let’s see what he can do.