President Barack Obama made expanding economic opportunity for the lower and middle classes the main focus of his State of the Union address Tuesday.
The federal deficit is smaller and the economy has largely recovered since the 2008 recession, but Obama said most of the economy’s gains have gone to the rich, not the poor.
“Upward mobility has stalled. The cold hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more just to get by … and too many still aren’t working at all,” he said.
To fix the economic gap, he told Congress to raise the national minimum wage, train Americans to have practical job skills and take other steps to “build new ladders of opportunity into the middle class.” But he said that he, and the states as well, should not wait for Congress to act.
As expected, Obama announced his upcoming executive order that all companies doing business with the federal government raise their minimum wage to $10.10. The wage increase only applies to businesses with federal contracts, and Obama asked Congress again to approve a similar increase for the rest of the country.
“To every mayor, governor and state legislator in America, I say, you don’t have to wait for Congress to act,” Obama said. “Americans will support you if you take this on.”
Mark Peterson, a professor of public policy at UCLA who studies American politics, said Obama probably chose economic opportunity as his main focus because the issue appeals to parties across the political spectrum and is likely to engender agreement rather than argument.
Obama warned that global competition and advances in technology have threatened and outsourced middle-class jobs. Among other things, he pushed for reform of job training programs to teach practical skills to the unemployed, more pre-K education, lower taxes for small businesses and better infrastructure to ease, for instance, work commutes.
The president didn’t talk about higher education as much as his other topics, but he did mention that increasing college access is another important tactic to improve economic opportunity for those from lower-income backgrounds. He also said partnerships between universities and businesses will be crucial for helping the U.S. be competitive in the “technology race” with other countries.
Aside from economic opportunity, Obama also stressed environmental sustainability, saying that the U.S. should not give subsidies to oil companies and that states should work themselves to reduce their carbon pollution.
He repeated his call for Congress to finish immigration reform, an issue that has stalled for months since the Senate approved a reform bill but may soon see more progress, Peterson said. He argued that doing so would also help the economy.
When touching on international issues, Obama said the U.S. will need to strengthen its defense, particularly in regard to what he calls a growing terrorist network that extends beyond Afghanistan. However, he discouraged large-scale deployments like that of Iraq and Afghanistan and said diplomacy should be used instead. He said drone use and surveillance tactics should also be limited so as to protect public trust in regard to privacy.
Compiled by Kristen Taketa, Bruin senior staff.