Barack Obama says US has started ‘a new chapter’

President Barack Obama used his sixth annual State of the Union address last night to declare that the United States had turned the page on unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a "vicious recession".

Attempting to draw a lie under foreign wars and economic crisis, Mr Obama mapped out to an unconvinced Republican Congress a bold vision of progressive economic policies to lift the country's middle class.

“Middle-class economics works,” Mr Obama declared as he pointed to falling unemployment, strong economic growth and shrinking deficits as results that his six years of liberal policies were working.

“The shadow of crisis has passed, and the State of the Union is strong,” he told a joint session of Congress in an hour-long speech.

An emboldened president, in the penultimate year of his tenure, presented further economic measures aimed at improving income inequality to help the middle class benefit from a resurgent economy.

The ambitious goals are unlikely to be approved by Republicans who sat mostly poker-faced as he outlined his policy hopes and goals.

“We are 15 years into this new century - 15 years that dawned with terror touching our shores; that unfolded with a new generation fighting two long and costly wars; that saw a vicious recession spread across our nation and the world,” he said in the centrepiece speech of the US political calendar.

“It has been, and still is, a hard time for many. But tonight, we turn the page.”

The address appeared aimed at shaping the political debate in the final two years of his presidency and the 2016 White House race along with reinforcing his legacy as a liberal reformer.

In a State of the Union addressed to a Congress led by Republicans for the first time in his presidency, Mr Obama said that expanding opportunity for the lower and middle classes would continue to work “as long as politics don’t get in the way.”

Tax breaks

He called on Congress to approve two years of free community college education and tax breaks for child care funded by new taxes on the wealthiest individuals and largest financial institutions.

“Will we accept an economy where only a few of us do spectacularly well? Or will we commit ourselves to an economy that generates rising incomes and chances for everyone who makes the effort?” he said.

Mr Obama pressed Congress to vote on paid sick leave for all workers and chastised lawmakers for not passing a law creating equal pay for men and women or an increase in the minimum wage.

The president called for trade promotion authority from Congress to agree trade deals with Asia and Europe in one of the few moments in his speech that had Republicans standing to applaud while the president's fellow Democrats sat silently.

He warned that he would veto any Republican bills passed by Congress undermining his health insurance law, unravelling Wall Street regulations or “refighting past battles on immigration.”

He also threatened to block any attempt by Congress to introduce new sanctions on Iran while the US is engaged in diplomatic efforts to agree a deal on Tehran's nuclear programme.

New sanctions would “all but guarantee that diplomacy fails, alienating America from its allies,” he said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

The president promised that the US would continue to operate a foreign policy that combined “military power with strong diplomacy.”

The US stood united with people targeted by terrorists, he said, "from a school in Pakistan to the streets of Paris," prompting some members of Congress to hold up pencils in solidarity with the victims of the January 7th attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

Mr Obama pledged that the US would continue to “hunt down terrorists” and reserved “the right to act unilaterally.”

He urged Congress to pass a resolution authorising the continued use of force against Islamic State, the militant group in control of large parts of Iraq and Syria that the US has been conducting air strikes against since August.

Stressing that the effort to defeat the radical Sunni Muslim group would “take time” and “require focus,” he vowed that it would succeed.

Against the backdrop of rising threats from religious radicalism, his administration would “continue to reject offensive stereotypes of Muslims,” he said in the first State of the Union speech not to mention al-Qaeda since 2001.

Guantanamo

He renewed his promise to close the US detention camps at Guantanamo - “a prison that the world condemns and terrorists use to recruit” - saying that it was time to “shut it down.”

“It’s not who we are,” he said.

The recent move to restore economic ties and diplomatic relations with Cuba had the potential to end "a legacy of mistrust in our hemisphere," he said.

There was another first in the speech: Mr Obama’s condemnation of minority groups included support for “transgender” people, the first time they have been mentioned in a State of the Union address.

In the aftermath of the recent damaging computer hacking of Hollywood studio Sony Pictures, Mr Obama asked Congress to pass legislation needed to meet the growing threat from cyber attacks.

“If we don’t act, we’ll leave our nation and our economy vulnerable,” he said.

Rejecting climate change deniers, Mr Obama said the best scientists were saying that human activity was to blame and that without action, climate change would lead to greater migration, conflict and hunger.

“The Pentagon says that climate change poses immediate risks to our national security. We should act like it,” he said.

In a passing dig at the Republican push for him to approve the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas, Mr Obama called for more far-reaching investment in infrastructure.

“Let’s set our sights higher than a single oil pipeline,” he said.

In the official Republican reply to the speech, newly elected Iowa senator Joni Ernst, a rising star in the party, challenged Mr Obama to work with Republicans on tax reform, trade and job creation.

She spoke about moving away from the “stale mindset” of gridlocked politics between Republicans and Democrats which, she said, “gave us political talking points, not serious solutions” and led to “failed policies like Obamacare,” the president’s health insurance law.

Mr Obama addressed political gridlock in his own speech, urging both parties to engage in “better politics,” a kind of interaction “where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears”.

“A better politics is one where we spend less time drowning in dark money for ads that pull us into the gutter, and spend more time lifting young people up with a sense of purpose and possibility,” he said.

Among the Irish guests at the State of the Union speech were Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness and Irish Ambassador to the US Anne Anderson.