President Barack Obama's State of the Union address — in which he'll ask for $320 billion in new taxes to hit the rich and help the middle class — is much ado about nothing, says economist Peter Morici, a professor at the University of Maryland.
"It's hardly enough money to make a difference unless you're one of the big winners, like you have a child under the age of 5, so for a few years you'll get a big child care credit," Morici said Tuesday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
Newsmax TV.
Story continues below video.
Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now
"By and large what this is, is about doing nothing. He knows the GOP won't bite at this. The GOP knows darn well that these high capital gains taxes will kill off small business, because they'll kill off financing for new businesses.
"So what he's really saying is, I don't want to compromise. I lost the election and I would just as soon go home, end my term on the tax laws that I have."
Morici said the president is more interested in putting his focus on issues like trade policy to help the Democrats in 2016.
"He wants to negotiate those deals in Asia and he's going to try to get those. This is just to set up [Hillary] Clinton's campaign," he said.
Morici said while the American economy and economic poll numbers have improved, "they're hardly good numbers."
"The numbers of people saying the economy is good is fairly low. Still, it's just better than it was before. One out of every six men between the ages of 25 and 54 does not have a job," he said.
"Seventy-two percent of them are not looking at all, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. All you have to do to be looking is to send one resume a week.
"You want to know who ESPN is reaching at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays? It's guys who collect food stamps, have Medicaid for healthcare, mooch off their girlfriends, have a place to live, that's who's watching," Morici said.
He believes the president is counting on electrifying the nation with the promise of freebies in the guise of social service giveaways.
"Absolutely, that's what the president is banking on. Now, in the midterm elections, it didn't work, but in presidential elections it seems to," Morici said.
That's because most Republican candidates are "very white, very protestant, very prosperous, and they look like the anathema, the anti-Christ. These are the guys on Wall Street," he said.
"Heck, the Republicans couldn't have put up a guy with a tougher bio to overcome than Romney than they did in the last round. Also … Hillary Clinton striking these feminist chords, things like equal pay and so forth, paid maternity leave and what have you, and programs for girls in schools.
"Sixty percent of college students are women. [If] our schools are failing one of the genders, it's men, but she'll hit those chords and [those of] the cubicle girls, the women that read Glamour magazine and sit in cubicles in offices all around the country."
Morici said the Democrats could choose Minnie Mouse to run and she'd be elected president of the United States.
"In fact, if you look at Liz Warren really close, it's really Minnie Mouse gone to Radcliffe," he said.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.