By DR. LARRY MOSES
No one asked me but… The sheer stupidity of the recent stand-off between the Speaker of the House and the President of the United States does not bode well for the State of the Union message. The President technically has the right to enter the House chamber. However, he can’t just show up to deliver the State of the Union message. The Speaker must give him a written invitation to speak from the podium or dais.
The formal basis for the State of the Union Address is from the U.S. Constitution Article II, Section 3, Clause 7: The President “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”
There is no set time, interval, or method as to when or how a State of the Union message must be given to Congress. By not inviting the President to deliver his State of the Union message before Congress, Speaker Pelosi is denying Democrats the opportunity to boycott the President’s appearance as they did in 2017 and 2018.
George Washington delivered the first State of the Union Message on January 8, 1790, when he addressed Congress in the Senate Chamber of Federal Hall in New York City (then the U.S. capital). John Adams followed his example and delivered a verbal State of the Union Message to Congress.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president, chose to give his State of the Union Messages to Congress in writing. This became the traditional method of meeting the Constitutional requirement for nearly a century. Then in December of 1913, President Woodrow Wilson went before Congress to give the first modern State of the Union address. While it did not take that title until later, it in fact was a State of the Union Message and met the requirements of the Constitution.
Though some presidents reverted to a written message at times, all president since Wilson, with the exception of Herbert Hoover, went before Congress to deliver a State of the Union message.
With the advent of radio and television, the State of the Union has become an opportunity for presidents to speak directly to the American people. It is an opportunity for the President to highlight his achievements and to outline his priorities and policies for the future.
There is no way Speaker Pelosi wants to give President Trump an opportunity to tell the American people about his administration’s successes. The liberal press has been very active in shielding the public from the improving economy. GDP is growing at a 3 percent-plus rate, and the unemployment rate is near a 50-year low. Meanwhile, the stock market has jumped 27 percent amid a surge in corporate profits. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a better-than-expected 201,000 and wages, increased by 2.9 percent year over year to the highest level since April 2009.
Speaker Pelosi did not want the picture of Republican Congressmen and Senators standing to applaud while the Democrats sit on their hands in disapproval of policies that have improved the local and international conditions of the American people.
During one of President Obama’s State of the Union Messages, one Republican Congressmen shouted out “he lies.” This was considered an embarrassment to the House and Senate, and he was censured. If the President were to deliver his State of the Union message before Congress, one might expect a whole lot worse from the new young progressives elected in 2018.
Today the President could meet Constitutional obligation by merely tweeting the traditional ending of the State of the Union message: “The state of the union is strong.”
Not that the Supreme Court would know. The late Justice Antonin Scalia stopped attending the State of the Union in 1997, calling it “a childish spectacle.” Justice Clarence Thomas also regularly skips the event, and Justice Samuel Alito hasn’t attended since 2010. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not attend President Trump’s State of the Union in 2017 or 2018. So much for a non-political Supreme Court.
No one asked me but… To wall, or not to wall, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the rants and raves of the outrageous Speaker of the House, or to take to Twitter against a sea of stupidity…. To tweet, to bargain no more; and by tweet to say we end the financial woes of thousands of government employees.
May little Billy Shakespeare forgive my paraphrase.
The Federation for American Immigration Reform claims to be a non-partisan, public interest organization, free of party loyalties and special interest connection. In that role they studied the financial impact of illegal immigration on each state in the Union. They reported that illegal immigration cost the people of Nevada $1.1 billion each year.
According to this organization there are 200,000 illegal aliens living in the State of Nevada. The illegal aliens pay an estimated $63 million in taxes, leaving $1.1 billion dollars for the legal residents of the State of Nevada.
The costs break down as follows: $830 million in education, $183 million in Health Care, $152 million in Justice and Law enforcement, $10 million in Public assistance and $17 million in General Government Services. All of this amounts to $1,510 per household headed by a United States citizen.
The Clark County School District has estimated that 10 percent of the student population is made up of illegal aliens. That’s 32,000 illegal alien students. That means the district must hire 1,066 teachers to accommodate these students. The average district cost per teacher, with salary and benefits, is approximately $82,000. Teacher cost would be approximately $87,000,000 a year. This does not factor in busing, housing, or special programs for ELL and free lunch programs.
Thought of the week… “Our president delivers his State of the Union message … to tell congress the condition of the country…. the people know the condition of the country, for they live in it, but Congress has no idea what is going on in America, so the president has to tell ‘em.”
– Will Rogers
