By Amanda Reinecker

Even before President Obama delivered his State of the Union address, last week, most lawmakers and most Americans already knew the current state of our union.

To put it gently, it has been better.

President Obama has spent a year in office, without much to show for it -- apart from a staggering economy, increased debt, weaker defense and foreign policies, and several costly big-government proposals that have stalled in the Congress. His speech last week gave him the opportunity to present Congress and the American people with a fresh set of ideas for future. 

Heritage President Ed Feulner outlines what the President should have said:

You need a new approach and fresh domestic and foreign policies. The caps on spending which reports [Monday] said you were considering are but an exceedingly modest first step, and the devil is in the details. The caps will do virtually nothing to improve the nation's fiscal health unless you tackle Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Shifting tactics and stoking populism will be both cynical and condescending to the voters, who will see through this strategy.

Unfortunately, Heritage experts agree, that's not what we got. As Heritage's Conn Carroll writes, "this was a speech only the entrenched interests in Washington could love."  

The President's speech was an attempt "to keep all of [his] legislative efforts alive while also acknowledging that the country has firmly rejected his policy agenda," writes Carroll. It was a call to forge ahead with tax-and-spend policies, despite receding public support and ever-growing debt.

So why forge ahead? The President "still believes the problem is that people fail to understand his goals," suggests Heritage fellow and former Congressman Ernest Istook. "Instead, his problem is that we understand them all too well."

Summarizing President Obama's address for Politico.com, Heritage's Rory Cooper writes:

He said he wanted to control spending, and then rattled off a laundry list of liberal investments (free money!). He asked for alternatives to health care reform, ignoring that conservatives have been offering them up by the dozens all year. He said he hadn't raised taxes, which simply is not true. He envisioned government subsidized railroads, jobs and industry. And he intimidated and scolded the Supreme Court who sat there by duty taking it. That was not a very presidential moment, nor calculated very wisely.

The President also discussed the threat America faces from terrorism -- but just barely. It wasn't until about 40 minutes into his speech that the President gave the matter even a passing mention.

"This isn't surprising," writes Heritage security expert Jena Baker McNeil. Despite last year's terror attack at Fort Hood and the near miss on Christmas Day, "Obama [is often] reluctant to embrace the responsibility of defending the nation against acts of terrorism."

In an open letter to the White House, Heritage President Ed Feulner tells the President that "it's the policies you need to change, not the spin." Unfortunately, the President's address was laced with more of the same: big-government; bloated spending; and lofty promises.

There is a direct link between increased government regulation and economic stagnation, and more and more Americans are seeing this correlation firsthand. According to Heritage's 2010 Index of Economic Freedom, the United States isn't as free as it used to be; Americans are worse off in terms of government spending, monetary freedom, financial freedom, property rights, investment freedom and fiscal freedom.

Although the damage began before President Obama took office, his administration has made matters worse with policies that "erode our economic freedom." These big-government programs "won't spark the desired recovery," Heritage's Bill Beach argues in the Washington Times. "They will only delay it, and prolong the human suffering."

Many on the left are adamantly opposed to the previous week's Supreme Court ruling upholding the First Amendment's ban on speech regulations. Liberals, who often defend all manner of behavior on First Amendment grounds, complain that corporations are not "persons" and are thus not entitled to free speech.

Responding to negative remarks from mainstream media, Heritage legal scholar Hans von Spakovsky says "if media corporations were not specifically exempted, the New York Times and the Washington Post would now be warning that the free political speech of corporations threatens our democracy."

The White House has asked the Department of Justice to find a new venue for the trials of the 9/11 terrorism suspects. The trials were originally slated for Manhattan, where thousands died in the 2001 terrorist attacks. [The President did not mention this issue.]

As part of an ongoing campaign to dramatically modernize its armed forces, Russia unveiled new stealth fighter aircraft touted as a rival of the American F 22. Earlier this year, Congress voted to halt production of the F-22. [Obama touched upon reduction of arms in cooperation with the Russians.]

Liberals in Congress have announced they are prepared to pull out all of the stops to pass health care reform. They have acknowledged, however, that the process will not be a quick one. [The President promised to go ahead with his healthcare reform.]

According to not one, but two, New York Times Supreme Court analysts, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito was correct when he mouthed "not true" after President Obama mischaracterized the Supreme Court's recent campaign finance law decision.

[Amanda Reinecker is a writer for MyHeritage.org, a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation. Nathaniel Ward, the Editor of MyHeritage.org, and Eva Brates, a Heritage intern, contributed to this report.].