Maroon Weekly

By Autumn Dawson

On January 27th President Obama addressed many issues both foreign and domestic in his State of the Union address, and I would like to focus on a few of them. First being his inaccurate claim that the Stimulus Bill has mostly achieved its purpose.

The supposed main intention of the bill had been to lower unemployment by creating new jobs. When the bill was passed one year ago, the unemployment rate was at 10%. We were told that massive new federal spending would create more jobs ‘immediately’ and hold unemployment below 8%.

Would anyone like to guess what unemployment is at today…do I hear 10%…because that is the correct answer. So you tell me, how successful was that $787 billion dollar bail out?

The next issue I would like to address is something the newly appointed governor of Virginia, Bob McDonnell, pointed out in his GOP response by quoting Thomas Jefferson, who called for “A wise and frugal Government which shall leave men free to regulate their own pursuits of industry ….and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned…”

Let us not forget that a little over two hundred years ago, we did not have a federal government, and it almost stayed that way. Let us also not forget that we fought a war with England to become independent from a controlling monarch.

Today, we have a federal government on its way to controlling the energy markets, public school systems, wants to control health care, business and higher education. Of all the president’s remarks Wednesday, this was one of the most disturbing: “And let’s tell another 1 million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only 10 percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after 20 years – and forgiven after 10 years if they choose a career in public service.” He continued with, “Because in the United States of America, no one should go broke because they chose to go to college.”

I could not agree with his last comment more. However, nothing is free. Am I the only one that sees a problem with his notion that banks are just supposed to pass out money to students that will never pay it all back? How can a business survive with that as their business model? Anyone? Mr. President?

Now, before anyone with student loans hanging over their head demands mine, I would like to say that I worked a full-time job to pay my own way through grad school. I busted my butt to stay out of debt, and applied for every scholarship and grant available. I received a total of $1500 in grants. And while I would have loved to receive more aid than that, even at the time I would not have wanted it at the expense of free enterprise.