In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Obama will propose an aggressive blueprint that is likely to complicate his relationship with Congress and create headaches for the Democratic nominee for president in 2016.
The speech — Obama’s sixth, not counting a 2009 special address — aims to set the tone for the final quarter of his presidency and define his legacy, but Obama is already being accused of using his remarks to wage a symbolic fight with Republicans — by pushing a variety of non-starter tax hikes and other unlikely proposals — rather than pursue achievable policy prescriptions.
Here are seven questions hanging over Obama’s State of the Union address.
1. Which, if any, of these new policy suggestions will become law?
The president is relying heavily on economic proposals that alienate conservatives, even though Republicans now control both chambers of Congress.
First Obama proposed free community college for all students maintaining a 2.5 grade point average, but he did not identify a payment plan for an initiative expected to cost taxpayers $80 billion over the next decade. Then, firing an even bigger progressive salvo, the White House revealed Obama would push a $320 billion tax increase on the wealthy, ostensibly to help the middle class.
Coupled with a handful of recycled proposals, Obama will frame the White House’s theme of the night as “middle-class economics.”
Republicans aren’t buying it. They say Obama should keep his focus on trade, cybersecurity, modest tax reform and infrastructure spending — areas where bipartisan support exists.
“They’re trolling us,” a House Republican leadership aide told the Washington Examiner. “It’s a waste of time. You would think a president so focused on his legacy would devote more of his State of the Union to things we can actually accomplish together.”
2. Is it really worth provoking fellow Democrats on Iran?
Progressives are cheering Obama’s leftward turn of late, but there’s one area where influential Democrats are seething: Iran.
In a press conference just days before his State of the Union address, Obama pledged to veto legislation imposing new sanctions on Iran. The White House says the president will make a similar declaration on Tuesday, arguing that such penalties would derail ongoing talks to curtail Iran’s nuclear program.
Obama is taking a stand on Iran, even as he acknowledges that prospects for a nuclear deal are “less than 50/50.”
Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., and other senior Democrats are expected to join Republicans in advancing sanctions legislation in the days following Obama’s prime-time speech.
“I do not believe in negotiating out of weakness, I believe in negotiating out of strength,” Menendez said after Obama’s veto threat. “I think weakness invites provocation. I think strength avoids it. So it is counterintuitive to understand that somehow Iran will walk away because of some sanctions that would never take place if they strike a deal and over which the president has waiver authority.”
Obama has issued veto threats to nearly a half-dozen GOP bills since Republicans took over the Senate, actions eased by overwhelming Democratic support.
But some Democrats say Obama’s threat on Iran legislation isn’t enough to keep members of his own party from supporting new sanctions, predicting lawmakers could cobble together the 67 votes needed to override a presidential veto.
“I think at the end of the day, Obama will heed the warnings of [Democratic New York Sen. Chuck] Schumer and Menendez,” said Democratic strategist Christopher Hahn, a former Schumer aide. “The popular support for sanctions against Iran is through the roof. The president will have to clearly show Democrats how progress with Iran would be deterred by new sanctions — and I don’t think he can do that.”
3. Will you get credit for a populist pitch or punished for tax increases?
Obama is taking a Robin Hood approach to the State of the Union, pitching tax increases on the wealthy to pay for relief for the middle class.
The president is banking that he’ll be viewed as a populist warrior.
Republicans have a simple political message to counter that self-promotion: “Obama wants to raise taxes.” And they argue it makes even less sense to do so with the economy showing signs of improvement.
That argument has effectively kept Obama from increasing taxes throughout his time in office.
Obama’s message requires more explanation.
The president wants to increase the capital gains tax rate on couples earning more than $500,000 annually, charge capital gains on assets held until death and then passed on to heirs and place a new tax on big banks.
In turn, Obama will call for a tripling of the childcare tax credit, an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit and more federal funding for higher education.
4. Was Mitt Romney right about your foreign policy flaws?
For all the momentum Team Obama senses on the economic front, the president still faces a variety of vexing problems on foreign affairs — many of which have prompted Romney to say, “I told you so.”
“The results of the Hillary Clinton-Barack Obama foreign policy have been devastating,” Romney said at a Republican gathering in San Diego on Friday. “The world is not safer.”
Romney can point to the rapid spread of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria and the crumbling of Iraq after the withdrawal of American troops there as validation for his warnings in the 2012 presidential campaign. Romney also cautioned that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attempt to redraw the country’s borders, a prediction that came true with the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.
Such criticism is not solely a political inconvenience for Obama. In the wake of the deadliest terror attack in Paris in decades, Obama will be forced Tuesday night to explain how he is countering a threat metastasizing at a rate greater than he ever predicted.
And regardless of whether they want him to run for president in 2016, Republicans will inevitably hold up Romney to counter Obama on foreign policy.
“A lot of the concerns the president has had to deal with in his second term were raised by Mitt — and I don’t know how Obama answers for why he didn’t do more to address them,” said Republican strategist Patrick Griffin. “It’s a question that will be continually asked. The president’s only answer seems to be that the world is more complex than Mitt understands. That doesn’t fly.”
5. Given the slow drip of proposals in advance of the speech, why should people tune in?
The White House hasn’t left much in the president’s speech to the imagination. Rather than wait for Obama to unveil major policy proposals Tuesday night, Obama’s advisers opted to release them on a near-daily basis in the last two weeks.
In addition to free community college and tax increases on the wealthy, Obama wants to make it easier for first-time buyers to obtain a mortgage, treat the Internet like a public utility and tighten cybersecurity measures.
He has already spared up to 5 million illegal immigrants from deportation, normalized talks with Cuba and imposed new regulations on methane emissions, executive actions that will feature prominently in his speech.
As a result, many Americans might opt to change the channel when Obama’s remarks are broadcast across all the major networks. Viewership for Obama’s lengthy State of the Union addresses has been dropping steadily since he took office, and last year’s was the second-lowest rated since Nielsen began following the State of the Union more than two decades ago.
The White House says Obama’s speech is not about surprising the American public with new initiatives but convincing them the president is steering the economy in the right direction.
“We’ve given you a lot of the details in advance to make it easy for everyone out there,” explained White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” Obama is focused on “how we make paychecks go farther right now, how we create more good-paying jobs right now and how do we get people the skills they need to get those high-paying jobs.”
6. How many vetoes are coming?
“I’m going to play offense,” Obama told Democrats at the party’s recent retreat in Baltimore, vowing to veto a flurry of Republican bills on issues ranging from the Keystone XL pipeline to his executive action on immigration.
Though Obama’s pledge emboldened left-leaning Democrats, it could open him up to the same obstructionist label he’s so often assigned to Republicans.
“It’s kind of hard for him to say we’re the ‘party of no,’ when he’s promising to veto everything in sight,” the GOP House leadership aide said. “He’ll have to explain to the American people why he is going to block items that have the overwhelming support of both chambers of Congress — and most voters.”
7. What does all this mean for 2016?
Obama won’t appear on the ballot again. Yet, his State of the Union address is full of presidential-election undertones.
In essence, Obama is already trying to frame Democrats as more in touch with the middle class, hoping to ease the transition of the party’s eventual nominee. Whether it’s Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren, the party’s standard-bearer in 2016 will have to run on Obama’s record.
Clearly, Obama wants combating wealth inequality and wage stagnation to be a central part of that message.
But some Democrats see an obvious downside to the game plan, since it is more about lambasting Republicans on middle-class issues than enacting new legislation.
“It’s a good strategy for the president himself, but what if nothing gets done?” wondered Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “The Democrats will have nothing to point to in 2016. And the next person likely to be president is somebody who can break from the past.”
