MANSFIELD, Ohio — President Barack Obama delivered his final State of the Union Address Tuesday evening in Washington, and his speech garnered mixed reactions from local politicians.
“He did not disappoint,” Shelby’s third ward council member Garland John Gates, a Democrat, said Wednesday morning. “It was a very typical Obama. For those who are his supporters, he did not disappoint. For those who aren’t, well, they, like always, were disappointed.”
Gates said what impressed him the most was the president’s pledge to lead the world in curing cancer, and the trust he put in Vice President Joe Biden to lead the way. Biden’s son, Beau Biden, died in 2015 of brain cancer.
The pledge resonated with Gates — the council member said he has a horrific history with cancer in his family.
“Our country’s history proves that we can (cure cancer). My sister, who’s 10 years older than me, was part of a group in the ’50s here in Shelby where the polio vaccine was tested. Now we only hear of a handful of cases with that. And small pox … that’s been eradicated from the world. It’s past the time to find a cure for cancer,” Gates said.
On a more pragmatic note, Gates was struck with the president’s remarks about health care, a topic so controversial it has caused Ohio’s Legislature to appeal the Affordable Care Act nearly 60 times, said Gates.
“I wish the GOP would stop wasting their time and spending our money and actually get things done. It’s one thing to whine and moan, but they need to come to the table with actual solutions,” Gates said.
Aside from ObamaCare, State Representative Mark Romanchuk, Republican, was not impressed with the metrics Obama presented during his address.
“The metrics he uses for the state of our economy are one set of metrics. Theres another set of metrics that suggest otherwise,” Romanchuk said.
He said although Obama identified a decrease in the country’s unemployment, he left out the decrease in the labor force. And on top of that, he said, more people are on public assistance programs — like ObamaCare.
“There are 3 million people on Medicaid in Ohio and we have a population of 11 million. That’s a lot of people,” Romanchuk said. “And it’s not a good indicator of our economy.”
Romanchuk also took issue with Obama’s neglect in talking about the debt he’s tacked on during his presidency.
“Yeah the deficit is coming down, but he didn’t mention the $20 trillion debt. That’s a serious problem,” he said.
Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat, in a prepared statement did not mention the presidency’s debt — but he did say there is still much work to be done in regard to the economy.
“We’ve come a long way in the last eight years – the auto industry is soaring back and our economy is growing. But we have more work ahead of us to make sure working families across Ohio, and across the country, are benefitting from that success,” he said.
Brown also applauded First Lady Michelle Obama’s selection of Jim Obergefell to attend the address. Obergefell, a Cincinnati resident, was the plaintiff in the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision.
If you missed the address, check it out below.
