Obama's Speech Filled with Rhetoric, Wishful Thinking, According to Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation Columnist, Robert Hale

/PRNewswire/ -- The Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation website, http://www.fgfbooks.com/, released a column yesterday critiquing 14 points from President Obama's speech on Tuesday. North Dakota attorney and builder, Robert L. Hale, takes the President to task for "wishful rhetoric" and his "clear misunderstanding of how markets work."

Some of Hale's 14 points include:

--The President said: "In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans." Hale comments: "Does it seem a realistic that two percent of Americans are going to pay off a federal debt estimated to be between $12 trillion and $19 trillion?"

--The President said: "We have done more to advance the cause of health care reform in the last thirty days than we have in the last decade." Hale replies: "What has been provided is health care insurance -- not health care reform. Nothing has been done to reform a health care system that is bloated by massive Medicare and Medicaid mismanagement.

--The President said: "...we will put Americans to work making our homes and buildings more efficient so that we can save billions of dollars on our energy bills." Hale replies: "As a builder for more than 30 years, I can state unequivocally this is a fiction. It is simply cannot be done.

--The President said: "I'm proud that we passed a recovery plan free of earmarks." Hale comments: "Yet news reports identified up to 9,000 earmarks in Congress' $410 billion omnibus spending bill."

--The President said: "The ability to get a loan is how you finance the purchase of everything... and [how] businesses make payroll." Hale responds: "Businesses do not make payrolls with loans. Those that do, don't stay in business; they fail."

For more than three decades, Mr. Hale has been involved in drafting proposed laws and counseling elected officials in ways to remove burdensome and unnecessary rules and regulations.

"For those who listened carefully and understand how sustainable jobs and prosperity happen, the President's speech was a terrible disappointment," Mr. Hale said.