Weekly Economic Update 02-27-26: SOTU; Factory Orders; Case-Shiller Home Price Index; Consumer Confidence; and Producer Price Index

The State of the Union address has become unwatchable. Our elected officials act like fools while the country burns.

The views and opinions expressed in this post are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Georgia Institute of Technology or the Georgia Board of Regents.

Tuesday night, the President fulfilled his obligation, under Article II, section 3 of the U.S. Constitution, to "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union." His report set a record for the longest State of the Union address (SOTU) in history.

Regardless of your political leanings, one has to admit that the SOTU has become little more than political theater. The President at the time stands in the well of the House chamber and talks about how great the “state of the Union” is under his leadership. Those in his party stand and applaud in all the appropriate places, and those in the opposition party sit gloomily on their hands and provide appropriate looks of disdain and derision.

Why do we go through this every year? The Constitution certainly does NOT require an in-person presentation. I say we go back to the way Thomas Jefferson did it in 1801. Believing the in-person speech to be too “monarchical,” he just wrote Congress a memo bringing them up to speed. And it was that way for more than 100 years. Then, Woodrow Wilson decided in 1913 that the speech would be a good way to promote his policy agenda to the country, and that led to the complete circus that the event has become.

And a circus it is. And it became more so on September 9, 2009, when, during a joint address to Congress by President Obama, Republican Representative Joe Wilson of South Carolina shouted, “you lie!” The precedent had been set. Any remaining sense of decorum was lost. During President Biden’s last two SOTU addresses, he was routinely shouted down, heckled, and booed. Trump’s last few SOTU addresses have seen elected representatives escorted out of the chamber and others shouting down the President while he speaks.

These people are all children. As I have mentioned several times before, if your guy can do no wrong, and the other guy can do no right, you aren’t in a political party…you are in a cult. That was on full display once again Tuesday night. If you can’t stand and applaud the fact that the number of fentanyl deaths has fallen dramatically, or to congratulate the US Men’s Hockey team for winning a gold medal, you are in a cult.

More and more, it seems that we all look at the world through the lens of our politics. And when you see everything through the lens of politics, there is no objective truth on which anyone can agree. Listening to the various “news” channels on Wednesday morning, the speech was either full of “bigotry, hate, and lies,” or “hopeful, positive, and uplifting.” It is as if they live in two different worlds. And frankly, they do because they both look at the world through their own political lens.

Unfortunately, they look at economics through those same lenses. During the Biden Administration, I routinely criticized policies that I believe to be inflationary, and I received many comments from readers accusing me of being “too right-wing.” Now, over this first year of the second Trump Administration, I have continued to criticize policies the Administration is pursuing that are highly inflationary. Like clockwork, the comments I receive from readers on the other side are that I am “too left-wing.” My position on fiscal and monetary policy hasn’t changed. But because I dare to criticize their man, the cultists are offended.