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On January 20, President Barack Obama delivered his constitutionally required State of the Union address to Congress. In it, he said that America was on the road to economic recovery, having escaped the perils of the 2008 financial crisis, and he announced that Americans had turned the page in the war against terrorism. The President also announced his drive to provide two years of free community college to millions of Americans, increase taxes on the wealthy, and give mandated paid sick leave to working Americans. The Republican rebuttal was delivered by newly elected Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who said that the President needs to take the threat from the Islamic State more seriously, that more needed to be done to thwart cyberterrorism, and that Americans should have more freedom to achieve the American dream. Political pundits saw the State of the Union as an attempt by President Obama to lay out the political platform for his successor in 2016, while others saw it as an attempt by the President to rejuvenate his administration and avoid lame duck status. While there is little chance of many of President Obama’s domestic initiatives becoming law in 2015, extempers should still be aware of what the President said in the State of the Union because it is usually a good benchmark to assess the success of a presidency in any given year.
This topic brief will explore President Obama’s proposals in the State of the Union Address, the Republican reaction to it, and how the President may try to enact some of his policies in 2015.
Readers are also encouraged to use the links below and in the related R&D to bolster their files about this topic.
President Obama’s State of the Union
Before going into the details of President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) speech, it is important to give some clarification regarding its purpose and necessity. The President of the United States is constitutionally required to provide Congress with information pertaining to the “state of the union.” This can be found in Article II, Section 3. However, the Constitution is vague on how the President is to deliver this. Article II, Section 3 does not require a speech, although that is how the SOTU was initially delivered. The Brookings Institution explains on January 16 that George Washington delivered the first SOTU to Congress in 1790 and that the exercise was initially dubbed “the Annual Message.” Following 1790, presidents opted to send written reports to Congress until Woodrow Wilson resurrected the exercise of delivering a speech in 1913. This fit with Wilson’s strengths as he was a good public speaker and likely thought a verbal delivery of the SOTU would increase his political clout. The advent of radio, television, and the Internet has also made the SOTU more of a public spectacle, a time when the President could address voters and lay out their policy goals for the upcoming year. As Brookings explains, there have been some notable moments at prior SOTU addresses. In 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt talked about his “Four Freedoms,” which included speech, worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. This was delivered in relation to America’s status in the world, which at the time was experiencing what was later called the Second World War (the United States would not join that conflict for another eleven months). In 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson used his SOTU to launch his famous War on Poverty and in 2002, President George W. Bush made waves by declaring that Iraq, Iran, and North Korea were part of an “axis of evil.” Bush’s address was significant for extempers because it unleashed a torrent of “axis of evil” trilateral questions for the first three months of 2002. The opposition party has also been given some time at the end of the SOTU to deliver a rebuttal. These have included some embarrassing moments in recent years such as Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal giving an over-coached speech in 2009, Tea Party champion Michelle Bachmann looking at the wrong camera in 2011, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio getting dry mouth in 2013. In Bachmann and Rubio’s case, they became fodder for Saturday Night Live sketches, while Jindal hurt his presidential prospects with his poor performance.
In this year’s SOTU, President Obama came in with high approval ratings that are hitting 50% in some polls. Politico on January 20 attributes this to more optimism about elements of the U.S. economy and low gas prices. As such, the President feels more emboldened to confront a Republican Congress that won the 2014 midterms, when the President’s competency became a central point of attack regarding operations against the Islamic State and containing the Ebola virus. In his address, the President tried to recapture some of the magic of 2008 when he talked of uniting, rather than dividing, Americans. The Huffington Post on January 21 reports that President Obama took shots at cable news outlets, saying that that are benefiting from partisanship and gridlock. However, he also took on a partisan tone by warning the Republican Congress from sending him bills that he would veto. This included actions to reduce funding for his immigration initiative, reduce regulation of Wall Street, and attempts to overturn the Affordable Care Act. The Tampa Bay Times explains on January 22 that the President’s SOTU included more veto threats than any SOTU in recent memory, with President George W. Bush being the only president in recent memory that threatened more than one veto in a SOTU.
The White House recognizes that there is an element of “Obama fatigue” in the country, something that inhibits the ability of presidents to galvanize their supporters and command public attention during the waning years of their presidencies. To increase interest for this year’s SOTU, information was leaked about its content, the biggest of piece of information being the President’s “America’s College Promise” proposal that would fund two years of free community college for millions of Americans. The idea is based on a Tennessee model that will go into effect this fall. Under the President’s plan, the federal government would fund 75% of the initiative, while the states would fund 25%. This would be paid for by raising taxes on investments and capital gains, something that Republicans are loath to do. Brookings on January 21 notes that the President briefly discussed lowering the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance premium from 1.35% to 0.85% as well, which would provide another $900 to homebuyers that refinance with an FHA mortgage in the next year or uses one to finance a first home. This could improve home ownership by making it less expensive for some families to buy a home for the first time. Also, the President is calling for approval of the Healthy Families Act that would allow Americans to receive seven days of paid leave sick leave from their jobs each year. All of these tenets are part of a middle-class agenda that Democrats think can help them retain the White House in 2016. This explains why Hillary Clinton has become more a populist in recent months. The Economist explains on January 21 that the President is siding with center-left thinkers who are calling for an “inclusive capitalist” agenda that seeks to improve the wages of workers, while hoping that this will bolster demand and achieve economic growth.
The President’s hopes of reaching a high number of Americans fell short, though, because CNN reports on January 21 that only 31.7 million people watched the SOTU address, the lowest of any of the President’s previous SOTU speeches. By comparison, 52.4 million watched his 2009 address and 33.3 million watched him last year. Of course, those numbers are television viewers and do not include Internet figures, since people could watch the SOTU on Twitter, Facebook, the White House webpage, or YouTube, but the low number of viewers does show that some Americans are tuning the President out. In addition, U.S. News & World Report argues on January 22 that the SOTU needs some changes because the format has become too predictable and is nothing but “divisive grandstanding.” It referred to the President’s speech as a “snoozefest,” which is hardly what the White House wanted to hear.
Extempers can find a copy of this year’s SOTU at the following link courtesy of The Wall Street Journal. I highly encourage all extempers to clip this for their files and read through it. It would be a great piece of evidence to use in domestic politics speeches for the remainder of the competitive year.
Republican Reaction
The Republican rebuttal to this year’s SOTU was delivered by Iowa Senator Joni Ernst. It is notable that the last two Republican rebuttals to the President’s SOTU’s have been done by women (last year’s was delivered by House Republican Conference Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington). This is a branding attempt by the Republican Party, which lost the 2012 presidential election due to losing a sizable percentage of the female vote. The GOP successfully closed parts of that gap in 2014, while racking up significant margins among men in key races such as the Kentucky Senate race where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defeated Alison Lundergan Grimes with 68% of the male vote. Ernst centered her rebuttal on how Republicans do not favor government interference in people’s lives, especially economic activity, and The Washington Post said on January 22 that she had a great line in her speech which read “You don’t need to come from wealth or privilege to make a difference. You just need the freedom to dream big, and a whole lot of hard work.” The Washington Post argues that this could become the GOP’s message in 2016, as it tempers the bashing of the poor and contrasts a government-driven remedy for income inequality with a more personal one. In addition, it makes a more compassionate argument than the GOP featured in 2012, where voters making less than $49,000 a year broke for President Obama by significant margins.
Republicans have also chided the President for some of his security pronouncements during his SOTU address. For example, the President said that America was turning the page after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Brookings points out on January 20 that the GOP would not agree with that assessment because battlefields in the war on terrorism are growing in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. Republicans also do not believe that the President has an effective foreign policy to handle Iran’s nuclear program and they are likely to push for more sanctions, which President Obama warns would damage the chances for a negotiated settlement. The Atlantic on January 21 also reveals that Americans have significant anxieties about terrorism, with 70% of Americans telling pollsters in November that they see the Islamic State as a significant threat to the United States in the Middle East, but those Americans, just like the President, are somewhat confused about how to confront the threat. In the SOTU, President Obama asked for congressional authorization to fight the Islamic State, but one may not be forthcoming because the GOP and Democrats are divided over whether to use ground troops and what role America should play in the Syrian Civil War, where the Islamic State is a key player. A fact check of the SOTU done by Politico on January 21 also took the President to task for saying that America’s combat mission in Afghanistan is over, as the United States still has troops in the country in a training role, but those troops can still be used to go after al-Qaeda militants. Also, the President’s talk about arming a moderate Syrian opposition is criticized since the U.S. has yet to determine what the “moderate” elements of the Syrian opposition are.
Republicans have also taken issue with some of the President’s economic pronouncements. As the Politico fact check explains, the labor force has shrunk under the Obama presidency, although part of this is due to baby boomers leaving the workforce. Nevertheless, the labor force participation rate of 62.7% is the lowest since 1978 and wages are not keeping up, as average hourly wages rose just forty cents over the last year, an increase of a mere 1.65%. Already, presidential contenders such as Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney are trying to present themselves as champions of reducing American poverty and income inequality and the party that best addresses that issue may be the winner in 2016. This explains some of the impetus behind the President’s SOTU because he was trying to present a platform that he knows Republicans will likely oppose, thereby setting themselves up as a party that is out of touch for the next election cycle. Forbes on January 19 also explains that Republicans oppose some of the President’s tax schemes because they may hurt the middle class. It notes that the President wants to rescind tax breaks for 529 plans, which are savings accounts used by middle class families to fund college for their children. As of last year, $245 billion are in these accounts thanks to a 2001 tax change that makes the withdrawal of funds earned in these accounts tax free. Prior to 2001, funds that earned from these accounts were taxed at the regular tax rate upon withdrawal, which could be more than 39%. Thus, Republicans argue that the President wants to tax the college dreams of middle class families and redistribute that wealth elsewhere, which they say would violate a campaign pledge that he made not to tax middle class families in the future.
Republicans can also take some hope that they may have some other winning issues as well, even if they lose some of the income inequality battle with Democrats. Forbes shows a Pew Research Center poll on January 16, which found that 76% of Americans see defense against terrorism as the country’s top priority for 2015. Anxieties about defense may have helped the GOP make inroads among female voters in 2014 and the party’s stronger position on defense, albeit somewhere eroded from the Iraq war a decade ago, may help them in a future campaign, especially if the Middle East becomes more of a powder keg and Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee. The GOP would have little trouble tying Clinton to President Obama’s foreign policy, so if things get worse in the world that may help the GOP’s electoral chances. The second-biggest priority is the economy (75%) and job creation (67%), which is where the GOP and Democrats will have a big clash, but education (67%), Social Security (66%), and the budget deficit (64%) are other big concerns. On education and entitlements, the GOP have a bit of a stronger position as they are less wedded to teachers’ unions than Democrats and have positioned themselves as a party of school choice. Also, on entitlements the GOP argument could prove useful in the future since they have provided several reform programs, while the Democrats are defending the status quo.
Still, the GOP does need to find a new message for 2016, made all the more apparent by renewed signs of economic life. The Atlantic, in a separate article published on January 21, explains that talk of the deficit and national debt have apparently disappeared from the political radar screen. The federal government brought in record revenues last year, amassing more than $3 trillion in collections. This will increase if the economy continues to improve, and existing limits on federal spending thanks to sequestration will gradually work to erode the budget deficit. This, in turn, will probably decrease some of the country’s anxieties about debt and Senator Ernst’s response to the President’s SOTU did not mention deficit or debt at all. Contrast this to 2011 when Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan delivered the Republican rebuttal and warned of America going down the path of Greece. Ryan’s rebuttal followed a SOTU that mentioned debt and deficit fourteen times. The Atlantic says that if the economy does improve by 2016 and the deficit does go down, the GOP will have to frame a message that is less threatening to poor Americans and talks of keeping economic gains going. In many ways, the GOP will need to go to the 2000 presidential playbook, where then-Texas Governor George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore despite a decent economy on the platform of “compassionate conservatism,” that combined an emphasis on personal responsibility with government assistance to the poor.
President Obama’s Policy Road in 2015
Although there has been a lot of talk about tensions between the President and the Republican Party in this brief, that is not to say that both sides will not come together and enact some policies this year. Yes, attempts to reform the Affordable Care Act are unlikely to go anywhere, as are attempts by the President to enact his community college plan or raise taxes on wealthy Americans. However, there is agreement between the President and the GOP on the necessity of signing more free trade deals. The Atlantic from January 20 commented that in the SOTU the President promoted the Asia-Pacific trade accord as something in America’s national interest. The GOP has long promoted free trade accords as giving greater benefits to the American economy by opening new markets, while Democrats have been more skeptical about their impact on American workers and whether fair trade accords that include protections for unions and the environment are better deals. With the GOP now in control of Congress, the odds of President Obama securing these trade deals is improved, as are his chances of winning trade promotion authority, which would allow him to submit trade deals to Congress without having them changed via amendment.
Also, there are opportunities for cooperation on infrastructure. The United States is in dire need of better ports, roads, bridges, and even the Internet. The funds for such projects need to come from state or federal officials, but the federal government definitely needs to play a bigger role in aggressively funding projects that would put Americans to work and upgrade the nation’s transportation and communication grid. In past speeches, President Obama has touted the benefits of new infrastructure and the GOP agrees with him, but they are miles apart on financing the work because doing so would require tax reform. It is possible that 2015 may see this deadlock broken, but the odds are still long because any Republican legislator that would vote to raise taxes may face a primary battle in the next election cycle, not to mention a loss of contributions from anti-tax groups such as the Club for Growth.
President Obama seems to be more inclined to appeal above the heads of Congress and focus some of his policy proposals on the state level for the coming year. Politico on January 21 explains that the President has begun a journey through red states such as Idaho to promote his ideas for education reform and paid leave. For example, the President visited Boise State University last week to promote job-training programs in the tech field. As previously stated in this brief, the President got his community college idea from Tennessee, a red state, and the President likely took notice that seventeen states and the District of Columbia passed minimum wage increases last year. The President would like federal action on the issue, but if he cannot get it, working with local and state officials might be just as good of an option. Similarly, the President’s push for universal preschool is gaining steam at the state level, as Politico points out that thirty states and cities have increased their investment in early childhood education thanks to grants from Congress and philanthropists. Therefore, extempers should monitor what the President is doing with local leaders. In conjunction with executive orders, President Obama may try to get states or cities to pioneer his ideas, which would ensure their implementation and possibly provide more pressure on Congress to enact them if they are proven to work.
While the presidential race does not happen until two years time, there are three governor’s races in 2015: Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi. Of the three, Kentucky is probably the most significant as sitting Governor Steve Beshear cannot run for re-election due to term limits. Although Kentucky has voted for conservative Republicans nationally, has two Republican senators, and has five Republican House members (out of six seats), only two Republicans in the last forty years have won gubernatorial elections. Kentucky has been one of the few states that did not have any problems running its state health insurance exchange either and its Kynect model has become a template for other states. Republicans will try to tie the presumed Democratic nominee, Attorney General Jack Conway (who extempers may remember was defeated by Rand Paul in 2010 in the state’s Senate race), to the President, but doing that in gubernatorial races is harder than national campaigns. Democrats would love a Kentucky win to argue that their policies can work in a red state, but they also need a win to avoid a likely shutout on election night as it is unlikely they will win Mississippi. They have a shot in Louisiana if New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu runs, but the Republicans have a strong candidate in Senator David Vitter.
More than anything, extempers should expect much of 2015 to lay the groundwork for 2016. They should not expect a lot of new policies to be enacted and should expect more arguing about such policies and how they best serve the American working and middle classes. In such situations, foreign policy tends to dominate the news cycle and there will be ample fodder for that with Boko Haram, the Islamic State, what happens with Afghanistan, Russia’s aggressive moves, Iran’s nuclear program, warming relations with Cuba, and Israel’s looming election. The party that can dictate the tempo of events over the next month will be at an advantage in 2015 and it is very important for Republicans to win this battle because if they lose 2015, it could make 2016 much more difficult, especially if Hillary Clinton is the nominee.