Last night as I was watching Obama’s speech, I was struck by how non-specific he was when he was trying to be specific. He and his sycophants in the media may have thought he was specific laying out all that he intended to do as president but I believe he raised more questions than he answered. As he as introduced each new government entitlement, I wondered about how he intended to implement and fund them. Specifically:

I will cut taxes – cut taxes – for 95% of all working families. Because in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle-class.

How does he do that when he plans to let Bush’s tax cuts expire (we know that Rangel has already promised that all of Bush’s tax cuts will expire) and as much as the left would like to demagogue this issue, Bush’s tax cut did include the middle class, I should know we save about $1,000 since they went into effect. So what taxes will he cut? The tax rate for those making under $250,000? What does he intend to lower it by? How does he intend to make that up? By raising the top margins?

And for the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, I will set a clear goal as President: in ten years, we will finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Washington’s been talking about our oil addiction for the last thirty years, and John McCain has been there for twenty-six of them. In that time, he’s said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. And today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.
Now is the time to end this addiction, and to understand that drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution. Not even close.
As President, I will tap our natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power. I’ll help our auto companies re-tool, so that the fuel-efficient cars of the future are built right here in America. I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars. And I’ll invest 150 billion dollars over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy – wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels; an investment that will lead to new industries and five million new jobs that pay well and can’t ever be outsourced.

How do we end our oil independence when he won’t allow off shore drilling? How does he end our oil addiction when the best estimates for new technology are years away? Isn’t taping the oil reserves a stop gap measure? How would that even lower the cost of gas and what would we do if someone cut off our foreign oil supply? What would our military do? How would we defend ourselves? And what about replenishing the oil supply that’s been depleted? Wouldn’t that raise the cost of gas and wouldn’t it be more expensive to replenish now that oil is more expensive.
How does he intend to pay for this investment? Windfall profit tax? How does clean coal and nuclear help the prices at the pump and end our oil dependence? How is he going to help us afford the new cars? With a tax break? A voucher? What new cars is he talking about? Hybrids don’t end our oil dependency and is still pretty expense. Electric cars? The current electric car price is over $20,000, how much of that will he give us? How will he pay for this? He isn’t going to be able to tax corporations enough to afford the cost of a new car (especially when he intends to provide universal healthcare,money for college, train and pay for more teachers). Will we all be junking our current cars? Where does he expect us to dump them? Mexico?
Why in the world would he think that 150 billion would be enough of an investment to get us on the road to wind and solar power? A thousand mega watt coal power plant costs a billion to build but new technology would double the cost. What about storage? Currently there is no good way to store power, so most of that money would have to go into research. How do we end our dependency on foreign oil in ten years when the technology isn’t in place to do it?

I’ll invest in early childhood education. I’ll recruit an army of new teachers, and pay them higher salaries and give them more support. And in exchange, I’ll ask for higher standards and more accountability. And we will keep our promise to every young American – if you commit to serving your community or your country, we will make sure you can afford a college education.

Does he intend to give the states yet more money to hire new teachers and to train them or does he intend to create a federal bureaucracy to do the job the states are doing? Does he intend to make the states take the teachers that the federal government hired and trained? How does he force them to do that?
Does he intend to reimburse the college students the money instead of loaning it with the promise of repayment in work? Does he intend to create another level of bureaucracy to assign the jobs and make sure they get done?

Now is the time to finally keep the promise of affordable, accessible health care for every single American. If you have health care, my plan will lower your premiums. If you don’t, you’ll be able to get the same kind of coverage that members of Congress give themselves. And as someone who watched my mother argue with insurance companies while she lay in bed dying of cancer, I will make certain those companies stop discriminating against those who are sick and need care the most.

How does he intend to lower the price of privately held insurance? Set prices for what the health insurance providers can charge? Does he intend to cap what the hospitals and doctors charge as well? Does he intend to set up a federal bureaucracy to oversee the insurance companies and will he mandate what treatment they’ll have to fund?

And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day’s work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons.

How does he intend to make sure the corporations comply with this mandate? How do you ensure equal pay for equal skills and equal education? Does he plan to enact law that forces corporations to pay women the same amount whether they deserve it or not?

I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less – because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

How does he do that? What? There’s a line item veto? Does he actually think that he’ll be able to cut through the red tape and bureaucracy and make an end run around Congress to cut governmental programs? When he said this, I wondered if he didn’t understand how Washington worked since he hasn’t really been there much since getting elected, as Kaus notes:

Gave voters little sense that he understands and can master the pressures–bureaucratic imperatives, unions, civil service rules– that have often caused previous idealistic liberal presidents to fall short while sucking up taxpayer dollars.

It’s funny that he intends to cut bureaucracy while at the same time adding so layers: energy, education, healthcare and someone to oversee salaries in the private sector.
His speech didn’t represent much of a change, it sounded like a typical liberal politician’s speech: promise everything but don’t tell us how you intend to fund or implement it. Saying that he’d end corporate loopholes (yet another example of a vague promise to do something but nothing specific) and tax 5% of Americas doesn’t even come close to funding everything he intends to do.