It was a year ago, in the last State of the Union address, that the president called for some fiscal discipline in a small portion of the federal budget and increased transparency on congressional earmarks — while simultaneously adding $70 billion in new federal spending, or "investment," as the president Orwellianishly calls his big spending.

This time around, with the irritation of a Republican-controlled House of Representatives, the president is defiantly proposing more of the same — spending increases for education, energy and infrastructure on top of the already massive spikes in spending on those areas that have already taken place on his watch.

These are, of course, not investments. They are "simply an argument for bigger government," as Keith Hennessey, chief of the White House National Economic Council during the George W. Bush administration, noted when he reviewed Obama's speech on "investment" at Carnegie-Mellon University last June.