Things are not as good, not as bad as they say

Things are definitely not as good as President Obama made them sound in Tuesday night's State of the Union address.

Nor are they as bad as the gloom-and-doom Republican response made them sound.

For instance, Republicans blasted the president for the denial of the Keystone XL pipeline permit -- an issue he didn't address directly -- despite their own culpability in boxing the administration into a corner that left it few other choices.

We predict the pipeline will eventually be built, following a route avoiding the most sensitive parts of the sandhills, despite continued opposition by those whose true goal was killing the project outright.

Southwest Nebraska might be interested in the president's call for partnerships between community colleges and companies, to train workers for new careers. But is that something that has to be coordinated through a new federal program?

We could also feel a positive impact from Obama's call for creation of a Veterans Jobs Corps to help cities hire former militaray personnel, as well as tax credits for companies that hire veterans.

All of us feel the effects of health care reform, and Obama's claim that the new system "relies on a reformed private market, not a government program," is only partly true, according to fact checking by the Associated Press.

"About half of the more than 30 million uninsured Americans expected to gain coverage through the health care law will be enrolled in a government program," Calvin Woodward said in an AP story. "Medicaid, the federal-state program for low-income people, will be expanded starting in 2014 to cover childless adults living near the poverty line," he wrote. The other half will be in private health plans through new state-based insurance markets, but many of them will receive federal subsidies to make their premiums more affordable -- also a government program. Assuming the Supreme Court upholds the concept of an individual mandate to buy health insurance, everyone will be required to carry health coverage, either through an employer, by buying their own plan, or through a government program.

Despite mentioning jobs 32 times and calling for increasing the exports, the president failed to mention agriculture, one of the most productive and export-successful industries in the United States.

Nor was there much to cheer the Southwest Nebraska ethanol industry, Obama instead opting to focuses on domestic oil and natural gas production, as well as renewing Section 1603 tax credits for wind and solar development, which are equivalent to about 1 percent of U.S. power production capacity.

He also touted the fact that U.S. oil imports were at their lowest point in 16 years, without mentioning that an increase in biofuel production deserves some of the credit.

The president is reportedly planning to unveil his "Blueprint for a Bioeconomy" next week. We'll have to wait and see what he has in mind.

Unfortunately, both Obama's speech and the Republican response sounded more like campaign rhetoric than real plans for lifting the country out of its current economic gully. Let's hope it doesn't take a bigger crisis to spur Washington leadership into finding real, lasting solutions to our problems.