In case you missed it, here is the full text of President Obama's State of the Union address.
Summary:
• Reduce Medicare taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors.
• Medicare payments based on the quality of care that our seniors receive.
• Get rid of tax loopholes and deductions for the well-off and the well-connected.
• Tax code that lowers incentives to move jobs overseas and lowers tax rates for businesses creating jobs in the U.S.
• Three additional regional manufacturing hubs where Dept. of Defense and Dept. of Energy partner with business to create high-tech jobs, proposal for a total of fifteen.
• Calls for Congress to create market-based solution to climate change, will take executive actions to reduce pollution, prepare for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.
• Continue to drive down solar energy costs.
• Cut red tape and speeding up new oil and gas permits to promote natural gas and energy independence.
• Use oil and gas revenues to fund an Energy Security Trust to fund new research and technology to shift cars and trucks off oil for good.
• Cut in half the energy wasted by homes and businesses over the next 20 years.
• "Fix-It-First" program to put people to work on our most urgent repairs, like the nearly 70,000 structurally deficient bridges across the country.
• Partnership to Rebuild America to attract private capital for modern ports, pipelines and schools.
• Call for Congress to pass mortgage refinancing bill.
• Proposes working with states to make high-quality preschool available to every single child in America.
• Program to allow students to graduate with a high school diploma and an associate's degree in computers or engineering.
• Reward high schools who partner with colleges and employers and create STEM classes.
• Call for Congress to change the Higher Education Act so that affordability and value are included in determining which colleges receive certain types of federal aid.
• Comprehensive immigration reform: stronger border security, responsible pathway to earned citizenship, fix the immigration system to cut waiting periods and attract highly-skilled entrepreneurs and engineers.
• Call for Congress to pass the Violence Against Women Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act.
• Raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour
• Put people back to work rebuilding vacant homes in run-down neighborhoods, partner with 20 of the hardest-hit towns to work with local leaders to target resources at public safety, education, and housing.
• Tax credits for hiring, removing the financial deterrents to marriage for low-income couples, do more to encourage fatherhood.
• Another 34,000 American troops will come home from Afghanistan over the next year, war there will be over by the end of next year.
• Forge a durable legal and policy framework to guide our counterterrorism efforts, engage Congress to ensure that targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, and that efforts are more transparent to the American people and to the world.
• Warnings to North Korea and Iran, work with Russua on further nuclear arms reductions, lead the global effort to secure nuclear materials.
• Executive order to strengthen cyber defenses, increase information sharing, and develop standards to protect national security, jobs, and privacy.
• Call for Congress to pass legislation giving government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter cyber attacks.
• Pursue Trans-Pacific Partnership to boost American exports, support American jobs and level the playing field in Asian markets, Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership to promote free and fair trade with the European Union.
• Foreign aid programs with allies aimed at eradicating extreme poverty in the next two decades, connect more people to the global economy, empowering women, helping communities to feed, power and educate themselves, reducing preventable deaths, work toward AIDS-free generation.
• Will stand steadfast with Israel in pursuit of security and a lasting peace.
• Will ensure equal treatment for all armed services members, and equal benefits for their families, gay and straight.
• Invest in world-class care for veterans, including mental health care, supporting military families; giving veterans the benefits, education and job opportunities they have earned.
• Nonpartisan commission to improve voting and elections in America.
• Calls for Congress to pass common-sense gun safety reform, like background checks, laws to prevent anyone from buying guns for resale to criminals, get weapons of war and massive ammunition magazines off our streets.
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Sounds exhausting. We're a
Sounds exhausting. We're a lumbering giant. How much will actually get accomplished?
I can't believe there isn't
I can't believe there isn't more discussion about this. Very un-KV like.
I watched the speech. Was slightly disappointed that Ted Nugent didn't make a scene and get ejected.
Misrepresentation
I didn't listen to it, didn't read it and didn't watch it. I find it tiring watching a center-right president pretend to be a Dem.
One of the most telling "reviews" I've read, has pretty much summed up SOTU as watered-down campaign promises from 2008.
I didn't watch it either. I
I didn't watch it either. I am conflicted on Obama's presidency so far. His drive for bipartisanship specifically and affected party buyin in general renders him unable to take the bold steps and sweeping actions of bumbling morons of the Bush (mis)administration. On some level that comforts me but on the other hand, it looks like we are missing some prime opportunity to effect significant and positive change.
And yes, his position as a center-right politician (acknowledging that he is more easily pulled to the left than would be a republican center-right politician) does not inspire me to wax poetic about his accomplishments.
I will continue to mull all this over I suppose. Should I come to a conclusion I will tell all who ask more than they want to know.
First term vs second term
There should be no Illusions as why Obama didn't keep '08 campaign promises.
There would have been no second term if he did.
Now, if he doesn't use recess appointments and excutive orders the way Bush and Clinton did, then his presidency will be wasted and Dems on a national level will be looking at something like what Tenneseans are getting a regular dose of.
The bipartisan cooperation ideal is simply fantasy. Surely by now he has to know it.
Raise the federal minimum
Raise the federal minimum wage to $9.00 an hour
Greenlee's bike shop must be STRUGGLING. Conrad says he won't be able to hire three part-time summer employees anymore.
Since the Fair Labor
(in reply to EricLykins)
Since the Fair Labor Standards Act set the first federal minimum wage at $.25 and hour in 1938 the minimum wage has been raised 12 or 13 times. Each time Congress has raised the minimum wage the criticisms have been the same. And every time the minimum wage has been raised the criticisms have been proven unfounded. It is time for the minimum wage to be tied to the inflation rate.
mld
I went to bed early because I
I went to bed early because I had I very busy day today. And because of that busy day, I haven't really had time to review the speech.
Two
There are always two big follies each February while we are looking forward to spring. The groundhog forecasting the weather and the President reporting the State of the Union.