The State of the Union is an annual celebration of what the government can do for you, regardless (mostly) of party, designed to capture the imagination of a public that is primarily agitated that they can’t find their regularly scheduled reality television on the major cable networks, if anyone still watches any of that. It’s usually a laundry list of government programs or government ideals that end up costing more than they’re worth or never pass in the first place.

Barack Obama has been slightly more effective at making his SOTU wishes come true, and according to the National Taxpayers Union, we’ve paid handsomely for it. Well, except for 2012 when he was in the midst of a campaign. Then, we got a $28B reprieve while he geared up to sock us again in 2013.  

President Obama has proposed an average $41.7 billion in new government spending in each of his State of the Union addresses, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

In 2013, Obama proposed an $83.4 billion annual increase in net government spending. Obama’s proposals actually amounted to a $28 billion annual decrease in net government spending in 2012, The decrease mostly came from $49 billion in proposed spending cuts — the biggest cut Obama has proposed in a State of the Union address. A $75 billion mortgage relief program in 2009 was the costliest proposal under Obama, whose speech that year is counted by NTUF as a State of the Union address even though it technically was just an address to a joint session of Congress.

Ironically, one of the largest proposals expected to be in tonight’s State of the Union is a mortage benefit program that would make getting a mortgage easier, similar to the program that led to all of the mortgage problems in the first place. Which could, of course, force some poor future President to re-institute the mortgage relief program that made up the bulk of Obama’s early spending propsoals. It’s a vicious cycle.