First off, Obama making a pre-emptive strike on slashing budgets is folly. Here's how things have worked for the last 18 years:
Step 1. Democrat pre-emptively moves hard right to get close to the Republican position and capture voters "in the middle"
Step 2. Republicans move even further right to differentiate themselves from the Democrat
Step 3. Go to step 1.
After 18 years of this, here we are - even our elected Democrats are now so far to the right that Reagan would consider them to be fringe-right nuts. So for starters, Obama's pre-emptive budget gutting is, at best, extraordinarily ill-considered.
On to the speech's content...
Candidate Obama was a pretty forthright guy. He spoke clearly, e.g.:
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-june-15-2010/respect-my-authoritah. No weasel words there!
Since taking office,
President Obama has been a different fellow entirely, with an uncanny ability to have audiences believe he said something other than what he actually said. A case in point is his recent State of the Union Address. In that address, Obama pretty clearly signaled his eagerness to cut Social Security benefits for future beneficiaries:
To put us on solid ground, we should also find a bipartisan solution to strengthen Social Security for future generations. We must do it without putting at risk current retirees, the most vulnerable, or people with disabilities; without slashing benefits for future generations; and without subjecting Americans' guaranteed retirement income to the whims of the stock market.
At first blush this sounded OK, but on inspection... not OK. So Obama won't put current retirees and people with disabilities "at risk", and won't "slash" benefits for future generations. But he does want a bipartisan solution to "strengthen" it. And, of course, "strengthen" actually means "cut". In fact, whenever you hear "strengthen", "responsible", "adult", "serious", "bipartisan", "future generations", or "for our children" coming from the mouth of virtually any elected official today, you can substitute "screw everyone but the rich" and the sentence's meaning won't change a whit.
To gain some context when listening to Obama tomorrow, it is important to remember that his bipartisan commission has recommended that Social Security be "strengthened" by cutting 22% of benefits from future retirees. That comes out to a lifetime benefit cut of $56,000 per recipient, or $112,000 per couple. How many older Americans do you know who can afford such a cut? And these recommended cuts are despite the fact that
http://fdrdemocrats.org/the-common-sense-guide-to-social-security/2/">unless the US economy gets much worse than it is today, and stays that way for good, Social Security can pay every penny promised to future generations without borrowing a cent.
Good luck to us all. I hope we make it together through this dark, dark tunnel.
(For more information on how Social Security is about to be gutted for no reason other than to keep taxes low on the wealthiest, see my recent white paper:
http://fdrdemocrats.org/the-common-sense-guide-to-social-security/. It's a little long, I apologize, but I worked hard to get it right.)
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Ignore
out of your dire predictions. 
