President Obama stood up for his first state of the union address tonight amidst the proverbial massive applause. While there is massive uncertainty about what he will talk about and what he is going to make happen.

He proposes taking $30 billion toward small business loans. This is great- agreed. How about triple that?

He proposes eliminating all capital gains taxes for business.

He proposes slashing tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas and shift them to companies who give jobs to Americans. I like this- but how are you going to do it? That’s easy to clap for. He references the tax bill that the House passed and urges the senate to adopt something similar. He says he wants a job bill on his desk without delay.

We are a half hour in and he hasn’t mentioned the health care situation at all.

And then he starts asking about how long should we put the future of America on hold. He’s basically asking for Washington to hurry up. I like this approach, telling Washington that hemming and hawing and partisan politics are not going to fly. But read between those lines and his hopeful phrasing belies a message that we are currently falling behind. Still, at least he is calling for action.

“It’s time to get serious about fixing the problems that are hampering our growth,” he says.

Ok, so how are you going to do that? Encouraging healthy Wall Street growth that enables responsible lending. He proposes curbing the ability of big banks to take big risks. And then he starts talking about how he will send back bills that get reform wrong until they send him one that gets it right- so, should we hurry up or get it right?

Obama spent a little time talking about how to promote projects that will lead to clean and efficient energy, but I was disappointed when he labeled nuclear energy, offshore drilling and clean coal technologies as the keys to those goals.

He proposed doubling our exports over the next 5 years- whoa! How are we going to do that? What do we make anymore that anybody wants? Well, Obama said he is launching a national export initiative. Seek new markets aggressively and not sit on the sidelines. I spent this part of the speech waiting for him to offer up even one idea about how we are supposed to do that. The thing about that is that we can put a lot of things on the shelves but people need to want them. And Panama, South Korea and Colombia are not gigantic new markets, man.

Fourth, he started talking about what to do in education, with a focus on math and science and school reform. He said that the best anti-poverty program around is a great education. This is true, of course, but it isn’t that simple. What are they going to do with that education? Job creation, yes, yes. But what if people start going to Community College?

A $10,000 tax credit for 4 years of college- will that work for the community colleges? Not if you go to community college for 2 years like most people use community colleges. I like all of his talk about education but it was not substantive.

Then he moved on to talking about trying to up the value of homes and step up the plans to make refinancing possible and doable. And THEN he got to health insurance reform. I like that he changed the term to health insurance (!) reform, not health care.

“By now it should be obvious that I didn’t take on health insurance because it was good politics.” Chuckle, chuckle, nudge, nudge. Point made. His reason, he says, is the stories he has heard about people being rejected for pre-existing conditions, etc. This is a good point and it also repositions him for finding the true common ground between everyone in Congress. Who is going to be in favor of turning down sick people for the care that they need? In the end, he reiterated his commitment to health care (I mean insurance) reform. And he should have. I’m glad he did. He asked everyone to take another look at the plan. His call for anyone from either party to show him a better idea seemed like a rhetorical device that didn’t hit the mark- there is no reconsidering the issue at this point. Maybe cutting down what is in the bills already to make them palatable to everyone, but there is no starting over. It passes or it doesn’t.

Then he moved to set the record straight on government spending- by blaming George Bush. In 2007 we had a huge surplus. In 2008 we had a huge deficit. He then threw out some hefty numbers about how bad things were when he took office, and how he takes responsibility on adding $1 trillion to the national deficit in order to avoid a second depression. All of this in lead up to how he will repay the trillion dollars.

1. Freeze government spending in all areas, except health programs and national security.
2. Eliminate programs that don’t work.
3. Extend middle class tax cuts.
4. Not continue tax cuts for oil companies and people making over $250,000 per year.
5. He issued an executive order to create a deficit commission.

These freezes in spending will not take effect until next year, which, as Obama says, is how budgeting works. He then basically blamed Republicans and Bush for spending too much money over the last 8 years.

And to close the credibility gap in Washington, he talked about Washington doing their work openly- which doesn’t ring so true.

Then he called for lobbyist reform. Fat chance.

I did love his proposal to publish all earmark requests on the Internet. That would be revolutionary.

And he ended it all with a call to both parties to work together, to get things done, telling the Democrats not to run for the hills and for the Republicans to not stop every bill just to stop it.

There was a lot of hope and a lot of change. I hope things change and it works.

Photo Credit: jmtimages (via Flickr under CCL)