President Obama's State Of The Union Speech Was Most Interesting For What It Didn't Contain

After watching President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight, I was more interested in what he didn’t say that what he did say.

What the President did say was a rehash of pretty much everything he’s been saying for five years now, with one exception in the form of an executive order mandating a $10.10 minimum wage for federal contractors. And it will be interesting to see how far that goes. Will a business that has a contract to sell office supplies or donuts or something to the local federal agency have to comply?

Time will tell. But here are things that were glaring in their omission from the President’s speech tonight.

Keystone XL

The debate over this pipeline project has been raging for years. The Obama administration has delayed it time and again. The President has mentioned the project in past SOTU speeches, but as derailments on America’s overtaxed rail infrastructure make headlines the President didn’t deem it a priority.

Obamacare Disaster

The President talked about his signature health care policy, and touted what he believes are its achievements. He even spoke, later in his speech, about the difficulty of democracy and governance. “Mistakes” happen, said the President, but he didn’t acknowledge that fewer Americans have insurance today in 2014 than in 2009, the year he took office, despite the full implementation of Obamacare. That’s an inconvenient truth for the President, which is no doubt why he didn’t mention it.

National Debt And Deficits

In years past President Obama found it worth acknowledging the national debt and deficits. Tonight he laid out an aggressive spending agenda, but didn’t see fit to mention the nation’s spending problem. The nation’s five largest budget deficits ever have occurred during President Obama’s term, and while his predecessor deserves some credit for that, it’s still a looming problem.