What the President said about cuts and changes to Medicare and Social Security.

Overall, I liked most of what the President said. I do not agree with bringing private corporate money into our schools, and private/public partnerships result in public debt and private profit. That is a lousy deal for our children. That's how we got the deficit problems we had in California -- public/private partnerships in the form of borrowing from the rich by selling bonds instead of raising taxes to pay for infrastructure, schools, healthcare, etc.

There has been some controversy about what the President said about Social Security and healthcare. Here is the text from his speech on that.

Now, some in this Congress have proposed preventing only the defense cuts by making even bigger cuts to things like education and job training; Medicare and Social Security benefits.

That idea is even worse. Yes, the biggest driver of our long-term debt is the rising cost of health care for an aging population. And those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms – otherwise, our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children, and jeopardize the promise of a secure retirement for future generations.

But we can't ask senior citizens and working families to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and most powerful. We won't grow the middle class simply by shifting the cost of health care or college onto families that are already struggling, or by forcing communities to lay off more teachers, cops, and firefighters. Most Americans – Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – understand that we can't just cut our way to prosperity. They know that broad-based economic growth requires a balanced approach to deficit reduction, with spending cuts and revenue, and with everybody doing their fair share. And that's the approach I offer tonight.

On Medicare, I'm prepared to enact reforms that will achieve the same amount of health care savings by the beginning of the next decade as the reforms proposed by the bipartisan Simpson-Bowles commission. Already, the Affordable Care Act is helping to slow the growth of health care costs. The reforms I'm proposing go even further. We'll reduce taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors. We'll bring down costs by changing the way our government pays for Medicare, because our medical bills shouldn't be based on the number of tests ordered or days spent in the hospital – they should be based on the quality of care that our seniors receive. And I am open to additional reforms from both parties, so long as they don't violate the guarantee of a secure retirement. Our government shouldn't make promises we cannot keep – but we must keep the promises we've already made.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/13/state-of-the-union-full-text

So -- vague on Social Security cuts, and yes to Medicare cuts.

We shall see. Sounds ominous to me. But I can't be sure.

I liked what the president said about education, except the part about private partnerships with corporations. There, I'd need to know more details. I might like it very much, but I might not. I hate seeing a banner about Coca-cola or Pepsi on the fence of my local school. That kind of partnership is harmful to the health of the children in my opinion. But job training partnerships could be great.