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Obama To Address GOP Critics Directly In State Of The Union Speech
President Obama will address his Republican opponents directly in his State of the Union address Wednesday night, a senior administration official said, as he seeks to generate new momentum and rebuild his credibility as a leader able to change the way Washington works.
Obama will ask Republicans to "change course" and "work together to face the big challenges," the official said, adding that the president's tone will not be markedly different than it has been in the past.
Obama will also acknowledge "mistakes" he made during his first year in office, aides said.
But with voter frustration mounting and the midterm elections on the horizon, Obama will also cast himself as a fighter on behalf of the middle class. He will unveil a series of new initiatives but also weave his policies into the larger themes of creating new jobs, fortifying the economy and making the federal government more effective.
The prime-time speech, in front of hundreds of lawmakers in the Capitol and millions of viewers nationwide, comes at a pivotal moment. With his health-care proposal stalled, his filibuster-proof majority in the Senate gone and his approval ratings sagging, the president is anxious to reshape his agenda around an issue that matters to most Americans: employment. About two-thirds of the speech will be devoted to the economy and jobs, his advisers said.
Sitting in the first lady's box will be nearly two dozen guests invited to illustrate pieces of the president's agenda, recent events and examples of inspiration. Missing from the audience: one member of his Cabinet, in the event of a national emergency, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is attending meetings abroad.
Speaking on a series of morning news shows, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Obama would acknowledge "mistakes" he made in his first year. But all indications are that the White House believes the mistakes were mostly in its messaging and political tactics, not its policies. Obama is also expected to outline the economic progress the nation has made in the past year.
Following the State of the Union speech, Obama will take his message on the road with trips to Florida and New Hampshire. He flies to Tampa on Thursday to announce $8 billion in awards for high-speed rail construction in multiple states. The money is a "down payment" on the rail system, officials said, and will go to local governments for distribution. A total of 13 major areas will benefit from the project, whose reach will be felt in 31 states, the administration said. Obama plans to make the announcement with Vice President Biden, a longtime railway advocate.
The White House sees the project as going beyond transportation, billing it as an economic initiative that will produce thousands of jobs. The rail program is part of the previously announced stimulus package, not a new initiative.
Even as he emphasizes job creation, which requires new spending, Obama will call for a three-year budget freeze in the fraction of the budget that is aimed at non-entitlement domestic programs. The seemingly incongruous initiatives reflect the conflicting pressures Obama faces: Americans are concerned about the nation's soaring long-term debt, even as they want the federal government to do more to fix the struggling economy.
The proposed three-year spending freeze is aimed at controlling the deficit while protecting key programs, notably education, as part of an effort to show that he has not given up on his key priorities. Obama will call for a 6.2 percent increase in education spending over last year, making education one of the few areas to grow in an otherwise austere budget. Administration officials said the proposal would amount to the largest single-year request for federal funding for elementary and secondary schools.
In the short run, Obama will call for tax cuts for small businesses hiring new workers and some modest initiatives aimed at easing the squeeze on the middle class, aides said. He will seek to expand tax credits for child and dependent care, while limiting annual student loan repayments.
Obama also wants to extend the temporary bonus depreciation, which allows companies to accelerate the write-offs they get for depreciable supplies.
In addition, he is expected to announce his intention to appoint a bipartisan presidential commission to come up with recommendations to reduce the nation's long-term debt, likely through a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. The panel, however, would not have the power to force congressional action on its recommendations. The Senate on Tuesday rejected a plan that Obama reluctantly embraced to form a deficit commission that would have had the power to force a congressional vote on its recommendations.
The budget commission would have broad authority to recommend changes in the tax code and in entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Obama has previously pledged to set up a commission by executive order if Congress fails to act. Such a panel would lack the legal authority to force action in Congress, however, and key Republicans have said they would refuse to participate.
A legislative proposal to create a commission failed by seven votes Tuesday, hours after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released new projections showing the deficit would hit $1.35 trillion this year, a slight improvement over previous forecasts but still one of the deepest budget holes since the end of World War II.
Aides said Obama was working on final edits of his first official State of the Union address Wednesday morning and was planning to practice in the afternoon, before addressing the joint session of Congress at 9 p.m. Eastern time. Stunned by the loss of the Democrats' filibuster-proof, 60-vote majority in the Senate earlier this month, the White House and its allies in Congress are unsure of how to proceed with the president's ambitious agenda, including health-care reform, climate change legislation and an overhaul of the nation's financial regulatory structure. All of those items are pending in Congress.
Gibbs said Obama would make the case that health-care reform "remains central to the economic lives of the American people."
He also said Obama would explain why many economically pressed Americans are frustrated with incumbents of all stripes, as a way of once again calling for the political parties -- which are more polarized than ever -- to work together to solve the nation's problems.
"We need to stop pretending every day in Washington is election day,'' Gibbs said.
Obama's proposal to raise federal education spending by as much as $4 billion in the next fiscal year was described by administration officials Tuesday night as the start of an effort to revamp the No Child Left Behind law enacted under President George W. Bush.
The funding would include a $1.35 billion increase in Obama's "Race to the Top" competitive grants for school reform. It would also set aside $1 billion to finance an overhaul of No Child Left Behind, aides said.
Administration officials said they could not provide a direct comparison to current elementary and secondary education spending levels for No Child Left Behind, but they said federal education spending would rise overall by 6.2 percent under Obama's proposal.
Aides said the part of Obama's speech dealing with foreign policy would include updates on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, but they said there were no plans to announce new policy initiatives.
Following the speech, Virginia's newly elected Republican governor, Robert F. McDonnell, is scheduled to deliver the GOP response. Republican congressional leaders tapped McDonnell for the rebuttal after praising him as the kind of candidate who could appeal to Democrats and independents by talking about jobs, the economy and other kitchen-table issues.
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Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Google Maps
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