President Obama in his Super Bowl Sunday television interview defended the slate of proposals he rolled out in his State of the Union address earlier this month.
“Nobody was doing an ‘end zone dance,’ ” in the State of the Union speech, the president said in an interview with NBC’s Savannah Guthrie, who had suggested the president had performed an end zone dance after the other team — Republicans — had scored a touchdown.
Talking in the White House kitchen next to a counter topped with glasses and bottles of White House-brewed beer, Guthrie asked the president whether laying out an ambitious slate of political changes was counterproductive, given the outcome of the midterm elections and that both houses of Congress are now in the hands of the opposing party.
“I disagree with that,” Obama responded.
“My job is to present the right ideas, and if the Republicans think they’ve got a better idea, they should present them. But my job is not to trim my sails and not tell the American people what we should be doing, pretending somehow that we don’t need better roads or we don’t need more affordable college.”
He also signaled that he is looking for support from the other side of the aisle.
“Sometimes people change their minds — even Republicans occasionally start agreeing with me, although sometimes a little bit later than I would like.”
Obama has called for improvements in infrastructure, which would receive funding through a new tax on offshore corporate profits. He has also called for a program to help as many as 9 million students with free community college.
Asked what he wants to see in the last two years of his administration, the president said he’d like to see economic growth, “but I also want to make sure that everybody’s benefitting.”
