Point Counter Point Weekly Addresses

The president used this speech to preview the G20 coming up in Pittsburgh. He proclaimed yet again that the economy has come back from the brink and credited his stimulus package with helping it come off the ledge. Judging by the polls, I would say that the American people aren't necessarily buying this and it's not the first time he's said it.

He spent about half the speech talking about his plan for financial regulatory reform. His main focus is his plan for a Consumer Financial Protection Agency. In the president's estimation, many people got into bad mortgages and credit cards because there wasn't enough regulation protecting the consumer.

If the president really thinks this, he hasn't bought a property in a while. When he did, he should have asked why he was signing so much paperwork. If he had asked, he would have found out that each and every document is there in response to one regulation or another. Not only are there federal regulation but each state has their own regulations. The reason that your hand hurts after signing documents to purchase a property is because of people just like President Obama that think there isn't enough consumer protection.

In fact, the process is so transparent that borrowers are overwhelmed and unscrupulous mortgage professionals can hide their misdeeds in a pile of useless documents. The president's answer is to create yet another regulatory bureaucracy which will create a pile of new paperwork to sign. In other words, the president thinks that you still haven't signed enough paperwork yet.

Congresswoman Sue Myrick delivered the Republicans' response. She's herself a breast cancer survivor. She talked about how she visited multiple doctors in multiple specialties before finally catching the cancer and healing it. Then, Congresswoman Myrick said that treatment couldn't have happened in Canada or Britain where they have government run health care. That's because the wait times are so long that people die before seeing the specialist necessary.

Then, Congresswoman Myric railed against the Democrats multiple proposals. She said that whether you call it a public option, a trigger, or a co op it will lead to the same thing. That's government run health care like in Canada and Britain. Furthermore, the cost would be somewhere near a trillion dollars "at a time when our government is running a record amount of red ink."

Nothing that Congresswoman Myrick said was new. It's the boiler plate attack on the Democrats' plan. Given the poll numbers, that's not necessarily a bad thing for Republicans. These lines of attack are working and so the Republicans will continue to exploit them.