The State of the Union Speech Obama needs to make this year:

[ddeclue]

To quote John F. Kennedy, who in turn was quoting Orlando Battista "An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it". Well we've made some mistakes - I've made some mistakes this year - but I'm now going to correct them:

Let me begin by announcing that I have asked for and have received the resignations of several cabinet members and advisors, most notably my chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel and Treasury Secretary Tim Geightner and although I do not directly control the Fed, I call upon Fed Chair Ben Bernanke to retire rather than serve out the balance of his term at the Fed.

I am withdrawing from consideration the existing health care bills in the House and Senate, if presented to me for signature, I will veto them.

Instead I will be putting forth immediately a very simple plan to extend Medicare to all Americans who want it for a straight up or down vote by the Congress.

If it is opposed by filibuster, I will insist that the bill actually be filibustered on the floor of the Senate day after day on C-SPAN so you, the American public can see just who it is that is preventing honest hard working Americans from having access to the decent health care they deserve.

This same bill will ban insurance companies from sharing health information on their customers, ban them from requiring physicals or asking health questions prior to insuring a person, ban them from dropping a customer at renewal or in the event of a catastrophic illness, and will ban the use of a pre-existing condition as a discriminating factor in either deciding to insure someone or setting their rate.

Finally this bill will eliminate the anti-trust exemption of the insurance companies to further increase competition amongst them and level the playing field between business and the consumer.

I will pay for this proposal by eliminating the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and by ending the war in Iraq in the next 90 days.

I will be introducing a bill to reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act that was first instituted during the Great Depression to prevent any more stock market bubbles such as the one that caused the Great Depression. The elimination of Glass-Steagall in 1998 is directly responsible for the market crash we experienced in 2009 and we must put back that firewall to protect us from future calamities.

I will be introducing further legislation to seriously regulate derivatives markets for the first time and require that any new derivative be approved by the government prior to being offered to the investor as having some meaningful relationship to production of goods and services.

I will be introducing legislation to raise short term capital gains taxes to 90% while eliminating or long term capital gains taxes as a way of encouraging long term investment in the economy rather than get rich quick speculation that destroys economic growth.

I will be introducing legislation to raise the minimum wage to $15.00/hr and tie it automatically to the core inflation rate so that no American working full time in this country will be paid less than the poverty line ever again and the American worker will no longer be dependent on Congress to raise that minimum wage which it has often failed to do over the years.

Executive compensation has gotten entirely out of hand.

Therefore, I will also introduce legislation to limit executive compensation to a maximum multiple of 1000 times the lowest hourly rate paid to any employee of that executive's company - for example, if that firm pays it's lowest paid employee $15.00/hr, the maximum it could pay its highest paid employee would be 1000 times that number or $15,000.00/hr or approximately 30 million dollars per year in salary, bonuses, stock options and other compensation.

By way of comparison, my own salary as your Chief Executive is $400,000 per year.

If you feel that this is "unfair" and that you simply cannot live on thirty million dollars a year, I remind you that the 99.99% of your fellow citizens, including me, make do with less. You always have an out if you want to make more - pay your least paid employees more and you can make more accordingly.

I will introduce legislation to ban goods and services produced in other countries with child, slave or prison labor.

I will introduce legislation to tax goods and services produced in other countries to parity with labor costs required to produce that product or service at the American minimum wage rate and will tax products that pollute in violation of American environmental laws to parity to recover the avoided costs that those business save by moving their production to places without respect for the environment which itself respects no borders.

I hereby give official notice that by the power vested in me as the President of the United States that United States hereby immediately and unilaterally withdraws from both NAFTA and GATT trade agreements.

These trade agreements are fatally flawed and have outlived their usefulness.

They have hurt both American and foreign workers through a lack of adequate safeguards protecting worker rights, consumer rights, and the environment. Any future trade agreements with the United States MUST contain strong enforceable provisions to protect workers rights, rights to collective bargaining, consumer rights, worker and consumer safety, and the environment.

The United States will no longer make trade agreements with any nation that does not guarantee a multi-party democratic (small d) form of government, freedom of speech and press, and the right to non governmentally controlled collective bargaining for its workers.

I am will be introducing my energy independence plan in the next month to reduce and eventually eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. Some say this is expensive - I say it will save us both blood and treasure as we will no longer find ourselves fighting in foreign lands to protect our access to oil and will no longer be providing money to adversaries who use this money to take hostile actions against us.

My plan will raise automobile efficiency standards to 40 MPG highway for all new vehicles produced in the United States as of 2015. It will require all new vehicles to be operable off of at least two different forms of fuel: gasoline, diesel fuel, natural gas, ethanol or electric rechargeable. My plan will subsidize the installation of residential solar heat and photovoltaic systems through a generous tax credit. My plan will encourage the construction of new wind, hydroelectric and nuclear power through subsidies while encouraging the retirement of coal and oil fired power plants through taxation. My plan will also provide tax credits to employers who allow their employees to telecommute thereby removing cars from the road and reducing fuel usage.

Finally on the economic front, I am requesting that the Congress allocate an additional 300 billion dollars a year for the next 4 years to repair and upgrade basic infrastructure - roads, sewers, bridges, dams, levees, water plants, schools and public transportation. As we have seen from the flooding of New Orleans and the Minneapolis bridge collapse, our infrastructure is living on borrowed time and at any time we could face another catastrophe that could kill thousands of unsuspecting Americans.

I have already begun the shutdown of the Guantanamo Bay prison operation and all prisoners are at this moment being transported by the United States Air Force Air Mobility Command to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons where they will await trials or to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deportation to their country of origin. No person shall be held by the government of the United States without trial unless declared a prisoner of war subject to the terms of the Geneva Convention.

This morning I appointed a special Federal prosecutor to investigate any and all allegations of torture, kidnapping, imprisonment in contravention of the laws of war, and murder conducted by previous administrations, and U.S. government agencies and by foreign governments.

Within the next 90 days, I plan to order the declassification of the large majority of the previous three administration's records to provide greater transparency and accountability in government and will order a greater transparency in my own administration as well.

The Department of Homeland Security has been a failure as demonstrated by its response to Hurricane Katrina and continuing failures to respond adequately to terrorist threats such as the Christmas day attack in Detroit and the shootings at Fort Hood Texas. I am hereby asking the Congress to disband this department which has put additional levels, addtional barriers between ME and vital information and to return us to our pre 9/11 situation. I need to flatten out the bureaucracy and get closer to the information, not have important information filtered out before I even get to see it.

I am also asking for the elimination of the PATRIOT Act as both unConstitutional and unAmerican. This act has routinely been abused thousands of times by various government agencies often for purely political motives and it represents a far greater threat to the freedom of this nation than anythng it purports to prevent. My job is to protect and defend the CONSTITUTION of the United States. I cannot do that by allowing this unConstitutional law to remain on the books.

Finally I am proposing a plan to make life long education through accredited colleges, universities and trade schools free to all Americans who wish to take advantage of them. This is an investment in both our economy and our national defense and one which most other industrialized nations provide to their citizens already. The American worker cannot compete against foreign workers when he or she must factor in the cost of a $50,000, $100,000 or even greater educational loan they must pay off into their salary. We must find ways to take advantage of "distance learning" and internet based instruction to make education and job skills training freely available to all Americans throughout their lives.

In closing let me say that yes, I've made some mistakes this year but I have learned from them and this year we're going to correct not only those mistakes but we're going to start correcting for a whole generation of errors and put the American dream back on track.

Thanks you and good night.