THE US president will place jobs and competitiveness at the centre of his annual State of the Union address at 9pm eastern standard time this evening (2am tomorrow in Ireland). The speech is widely viewed as setting the tone for the 2012 presidential election campaign.
“My number one focus is going to be making sure that we are competitive and we are creating jobs, not just now but well into the future,” Barack Obama said in a video preview of tonight’s address, which was e-mailed to members of Organising for America, the successor to Mr Obama’s 2008 campaign machine.
The president said that, to compete worldwide, “we’re going to have to out-innovate, we’re going to have to out-build, we’re going to have to out-compete, we’re going to have to out-educate other countries”.
Last month, Mr Obama noted that the US now ranked 27th among developed nations for science and engineering degrees. This is “our generation’s Sputnik moment”, he said, referring to the alarm created by the launch of a Soviet satellite in 1957.
Mr Obama will tonight describe the five “pillars” he believes must underpin economic growth: innovation, education, infrastructure, deficit reduction and streamlining government.
Republicans have made deficit reduction their biggest issue and will oppose the president’s vision for boosting US competitiveness.
“With all due respect to our Democratic friends,” the Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said on Fox News, “any time they want to spend, they call it investment, so I think you will hear the president talk about investing a lot . . . This is not a time to be looking at pumping up government spending in very many areas.”
Although he appears headed for fierce clashes with Republicans on government spending, Mr Obama enters the fray much stronger than could have been imagined in the immediate aftermath of the Republicans’ victory in the November midterm elections.
Following Mr Obama’s agreement with Mr McConnell to extend Bush era tax cuts for all Americans last month, the lame duck session of Congress achieved an astonishing amount in its final days, including the repeal of the military’s discriminatory policy against gays and ratification of the New Start arms control treaty with Russia.
Mr Obama’s comeback began with those achievements and gained momentum when he struck the right note in a speech following the mass shooting in Tucson in which six people were killed and 13 others were wounded.
Opponents of the country’s permissive gun laws are waiting to see if the president will advocate a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines like the one used in Tucson on January 8th.
In recent days, the president has scored approval ratings of up to 53 per cent in opinion polls, his highest since the summer of 2009.
In one poll, 77 per cent of respondents said Mr Obama would work with Republicans to get things done, while only 46 per cent thought Republicans would co-operate with him.
Since the midterms, he has recast himself as a business-friendly centrist, for example by choosing the former commerce secretary Bill Daley as his chief of staff, and by appointing Jeffrey Immlt, the chief executive of General Electric, to head his new Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
One of the few concrete measures he will announce tonight is expected to be a reduction in the 35 per cent corporate tax rate.
The president will return to the themes of civil discourse and unity. “We’re up to it, as long as we come together as a people – Republicans, Democrats, independent – as long as we focus on what binds us together as a people, as long as we’re willing to find common ground,” he said in his video preview.
In an attempt to demonstrate bipartisanship, several dozen senators and representatives from both parties said they would break the tradition of sitting on opposite sides of the aisle for the president’s speech.
Mr Obama will defend the healthcare Bill which he signed last March and which Republicans last week voted to repeal. The Democratic-controlled Senate has refused to take up the repeal, so it will go no further, unless the Republicans take the Senate in 2012.
The new head of the House budget committee, the Irish-American congressman from Wisconsin Paul Ryan, has been chosen to respond to Mr Obama’s address.
Representative Michele Bachmann, a favourite of the right-wing Tea Party, will also deliver a rebuttal.
