President Obama welcomed a fight with Republicans in his second-to-last State of the Union address Tuesday, seeking to define his legacy and bolster his party’s next White House nominee rather than promise much deal-making before leaving office.
Addressing a newly Republican Congress, the lame-duck Obama invited GOP scorn by rolling out new proposals raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans and boosting government spending on his economic agenda, while defending a series of executive actions that tested the limits of his constitutional powers.
“We can’t put the security of families at risk by taking away their health insurance, or unraveling the new rules on Wall Street, or refighting past battles on immigration when we’ve got a system to fix,” a defiant Obama told lawmakers. “And if a bill comes to my desk that tries to do any of these things, it will have earned my veto.”
When Republicans cheered Obama’s acknowledgement that his last election was behind him, the commander in chief quipped, “I know because I won both of them.”
He also attempted to take credit for a rebounding economy, hoping to shake off a rough first half to his second term.
“America, for all that we’ve endured; for all the grit and hard work required to come back; for all the tasks that lie ahead, know this: The shadow of crisis has passed, and the state of the union is strong,” Obama said.
Obama’s most-viewed speech of the year served as the culmination of a particularly aggressive stretch for the White House following embarrassing midterm defeats in November. (Click here to read the complete text of Obama’s speech.)
Instead of offering new concessions to Republicans, Obama chose to spare up to five million undocumented immigrants from deportation, finalize a wide-ranging climate deal with China and normalize relations with Cuba.
His remarks Tuesday were aimed more at the viewing public than lawmakers in attendance, designed to challenge the notion that his clout had diminished entering year seven in the Oval Office, said political speechwriters and analysts.
“This is not so much the State of the Union but the state of his base,” said Kasey Pipes, a speechwriter for President George W. Bush. “He’s not doing this for policy reasons. It has nothing to do with creating the framework for negotiation. It’s a little strange, in some ways, to see this much confrontation — but it’s about positioning himself for an argument.”
That fight, as Obama put it Tuesday night, is about which party has the better economic prescriptions for the middle class, a theme the White House wants to amplify as much as possible before the 2016 presidential contest.
With the unemployment rate at 5.6 percent and gas prices less than $2 a gallon in much of the country, the White House believes Obama’s economic arguments now carry more weight.
“Middle-class economics works,” the president said. “Expanding opportunity works. And these policies will continue to work, as long as politics don’t get in the way.”
Obama on Tuesday pushed $320 billion in new taxes on the wealthy over the next decade, which would increase the capital gains tax rate on couples earning more than $500,000 annually. He also called for charging capital gains on assets passed to heirs and a new fee on big banks.
The president said he would use that money to triple the child care tax credit, expand the Earned Income Tax Credit and put more funding in higher education. Obama also called for free community college for all students maintaining a 2.5 grade point average — a plan that would cost taxpayers $80 billion over the next decade — but did not say how he would pay for it.
Intertwined in Obama’s economic appeal was a clear effort to win over women voters, a crucial voting bloc Democrats insist gives them an edge heading into the next election.
Obama called on Congress to approve seven days of paid sick leave for all Americans, mirroring the push to raise the minimum wage in his 2014 State of the Union speech.
“Of course, nothing helps families make ends meet like higher wages,” he said. “That’s why this Congress still needs to pass a law that makes sure a woman is paid the same as a man for doing the same work. It’s 2015. It’s time.”
Republicans, however, didn’t even wait for the president to give his remarks to declare his new economic proposals dead on arrival.
“Making government bigger isn’t going to help the middle class,” Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said. “More growth and more opportunity will help the middle class — and those are the Republican priorities.”
Among the few areas where Obama identified possible GOP support were trade, cybersecurity, tax reform and infrastructure spending.
In the wake of the hack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, the president called on Congress to pass a law making it easier for private companies to share information on cyberattacks with the federal government.
“No foreign nation, no hacker, should be able to shut down our networks, steal our trade secrets, or invade the privacy of American families, especially our kids,” he said.
By design, the speech focused far less on foreign policy than domestic matters.
The growing instability in the Middle East and the rapid spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria are less convenient politically for the White House. And the recent terrorist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris forced Obama to defend his administration’s commitment to keeping Americans safe.
“Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group,” Obama said, pressing Congress to approve “use of force” against the Islamic State.
“This effort will take time,” he added. “It will require focus. But we will succeed.”
In a rare split with senior Democrats, Obama vowed to veto legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran, saying such a bill would derail ongoing talks to curtail Tehran’s nuclear program.
He also pushed Democrats on trade deals, conceding that he was the “first one to admit that past [pacts] haven’t always lived up to the hype,” insisting this time was different.
On his unilateral move to re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba, the president argued it made little sense for Washington not to engage with the island nation.
Obama recognized American Alan Gross, recently freed from a Cuban prison, who was a guest of first lady Michelle Obama’s.
Gross mouthed repeatedly “thank you” to the president after receiving a standing ovation by the roomful of lawmakers.
There were few surprises in the president’s address, as the White House opted to roll out most of the ideas in the days leading up to the speech. Obama’s aides said it was a way to reach an audience not afforded to them by just one address.
“The media environment has changed,” a senior administration official told reporters ahead of Obama’s remarks. “You have to be more aggressive in trying to reach more audiences.”
Obama, who has vetoed just two bills since taking office, threatened to block Republican efforts to roll back his executive action on immigration. He didn’t directly address his previous veto threat of construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, but called on Republicans to “set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline.”
The president also waded into controversies on hot-button issues, such as reproductive rights and protests against police in Ferguson, Mo., and New York City.
“We still may not agree on a woman’s right to choose, but surely we can agree it’s a good thing that teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows, and that every woman should have access to the healthcare she needs,” he said.
“We may have different takes on the events of Ferguson and New York,” he added. “But surely we can understand a father who fears his son can’t walk home without being harassed. Surely we can understand the wife who won’t rest until the police officer she married walks through the front door at the end of his shift.”
Though the night was heavy on political symbolism and light on legislative consensus, many Democrats welcomed the defiant tone from the president.
“The reason why the president’s approval rating is going up is because the stuff he did has worked,” said Simon Rosenberg, a presidential campaign adviser for Bill Clinton and founder of the New Democrat Network, a liberal think tank. “There are real concrete achievements that are going to be very hard to take away from him. It’s given him even greater confidence to spend his last two years fighting for what he wants.”
Yet, some analysts said Obama is likely overestimating his so-called resurgence.
“I don’t seriously think he’s going to see a breakthrough with those kinds of stances,” said Martin Medhurst, a Baylor University expert on presidential communication. “Trying to burnish his legacy by taking on this role of defender of the middle class is pretty typical. A lot of people still don’t feel the recovery — it’s going to be hard to sell any kind of tax increase on anybody right now.”
