The State of the Union is Ongoing

On Tuesday, January 28, President Barack Obama delivered the State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress.  In this rendition of his annual speech, the President outlined his agenda for 2014, some of which recalled past priorities.  He called upon Congress to "make this a year of action."  He also made clear that he was prepared to test the boundaries of his Executive authority if Congress was not prepared to increase its level of activity going forward.

The President proudly pointed out that the nation has reached its lowest unemployment rate in five years, the housing market has largely recovered, and the manufacturing sector is adding jobs for the first time in two decades.

Addressing what many consider the largest political liability facing many Democrats as mid-term elections approach, the President dedicated time to defending the Affordable Care Act, noting that it has helped millions of Americans receive health insurance, and millions more avoid being dropped from their coverage for various conditions.  He chided House Republicans for taking 40 votes to repeal the law, but invited them to come to him with specific suggestions for how to improve it.

Early on in his speech, President Obama reiterated last year's request to Congress to help states make high-quality pre-K available to every four year-old.  He pointed to the research showing the high return on investment that comes from early education, appealing to the economic arguments for this initiative.  Notably, the President did not address the Strong Start for America's Children Act, introduced in both the House and the Senate, ostensibly as the legislative embodiment of last year's request.  President Obama's discussion of pulling together a coalition of elected officials, business leaders, and philanthropists to find ways to get more kids into pre-K while Congress got its act together may have ignored one direct target of exhortation - to stir up support for an existing bicameral (and bipartisan) piece of legislation - and certainly lifted the curtain on a main theme of the evening: telling Congress what he was prepared to do without them if they would not act with him.

One of the priorities that the President announced was raising the minimum wage for federal contract workers to $10.10 per hour.  Under this initiative, starting in 2015, the federal government will begin giving preference to companies that pay workers higher wages going forward, which could raise the pay for as many as 200,000 workers.  However, this measure will only apply prospectively and only to federal contracts.  Raising the federal minimum wage will still require an act of Congress.

President Obama also urged business executives to end discrimination against the long-term unemployed and admonished lawmakers for canceling jobless benefits for those who have been out of work for longer than 26 weeks.  This chapter of the President's address did not contain the same level of with-or-without you plans for the year that marked much of the rest of the speech, but marked a clear priority, and brought to the spotlight what has been a topic of significant debate on Capitol Hill.

Also on the topic of getting the American people back to work, the President called for new investments in job-training programs to make sure that the skills of the employees coming out of the programs are meeting the needs of the employers that are hiring, which will in turn lead to better paying jobs.

On the environmental front, the President announced plans to raise fuel efficiency standards on heavy duty trucks, having already done so for cars and light trucks, and to set limits on carbon pollution from existing power plants.

These topics, among the many others President Obama covered during his more-than-hour-long speech, showed a clear ambition and clear resolve to get something, anything, done during 2014.  However, many agree, the President's goals are not exactly setting the world on fire.  Time will tell how much cooperation the President will get from Congress as he attempts to work his way through his announced agenda, but if he meant what he said Tuesday night, for at least some of the goals, Congress' help would be more of an added bonus.