Washington:
President Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday night not to give up on his ambitious legislative agenda, using his first State of the Union address to chastise Republicans for working in lock-step against him and to warn Democrats to stiffen their political spines.
Obama appealed for an end to the "tired old battles" that have divided the country and stalled his efforts on Capitol Hill. He promised to focus intently on the issue of most immediate concern to the nation, jobs. And with his top priority, a health care overhaul, on hold in the wake of the recent Republican Senate victory in Massachusetts, he offered a pointed message to both parties.
"To Democrats, I would remind you that we still have the largest majority in decades, and the people expect us to solve some problems, not run for the hills," Obama said in his nationally televised speech. "And if the Republican leadership is going to insist that 60 votes in the Senate are required to do any business at all in this town, then the responsibility to govern is now yours as well. Just saying no to everything may be good short-term politics, but it's not leadership."
The speech, Obama's third to a joint session of Congress, comes at a particularly rocky point in his presidency, with many Americans - including some fellow Democrats - complaining that the president has lost sight of the priorities of ordinary people. And Obama acknowledged their doubts, conceding that some of his political setbacks "were deserved," a striking admission for any president.
His tone was colloquial, even relaxed; at one point he joked that the bank bailout was "about as popular as root canal." But at the same time Obama struck a defensive note, reminding the nation yet again that he inherited a mountain of problems and insisting that, one year after he took office, "the worst of the storm has passed."
At a time when many Americans are concerned, even angry, about the economy and about the performance of government more generally, Obama sought to restore public confidence in his administration and to persuade Americans that he is directing his attention more fully to the economy. While he did not offer any sweeping new agenda or far-reaching legislative program, he put forth a handful of new initiatives, including plans to provide small businesses with tax breaks and better access to bank loans.
After refusing to set a timetable for the repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the military's policy barring openly gay men and lesbians from serving, he vowed to work with Congress this year to repeal it. He called for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind, his predecessor's signature education law. In a nod to the growing political and economic pressure to begin reining in the budget deficit, he proposed a freeze on a portion of the domestic budget.
Obama campaigned on a promise to change the culture of Washington and to make government transparent. But on Wednesday night, he suggested that he believed he had not done enough, and spoke of a "credibility gap" that must be closed by curbing the outsized influence of lobbyists. "We have to recognize that we face more than a deficit of dollars right now," he said.
Reprising a line he used in last year's address to Congress, he said, "We face a deficit of trust - deep and corrosive doubts about how Washington works that have been growing for years."
He called for new rules requiring lobbyists to disclose each contact they make on behalf of a client with Congress or with his administration.
And, in a rare flash of open confrontation between the White House and the Supreme Court, Obama declared that a recent court ruling would "open the floodgates for special interests," and perhaps foreign companies, to exert more influence in political campaigns, leading Justice Samuel Alito, breaking with decorum at such events, to shake his head and appear to mouth the words, "No, its not true."
Republicans said they welcomed the president's partial freeze on domestic spending. But they warned against what they regard as the president's big government agenda. In delivering his party's response, Gov. Robert F. McDonnell of Virginia, a newly elected Republican, declared, "The circumstances of our time demand that we reconsider and restore the proper, limited role of government at every level."
But rather than retreat from his ambitious agenda, Obama sought Wednesday to repackage it, by explaining how his top priorities - the health measure, tough new regulations on banks, energy legislation - fit into his broader initiative to put the economy on sounder footing for the long run.
On health care, Obama did not chart a specific path forward for Congress. Rather, he appealed to lawmakers to "take another look at the plan we've proposed" once temperatures cool after the Republican win in the Massachusetts Senate race. He added, "Do not walk away from reform. Not now. Not when we are so close. Let's find a way to come together and finish the job for the American people."
Still, after a year of working to get health care passed, Obama said his No. 1 issue is now the economy and jobs. "Jobs must be our No. 1 focus in 2010," Obama said, adding "People are out of work. They are hurting. They need our help."
To that end, the president renewed his call for Congress to pass a jobs bill that would spur investment in green jobs and clean energy, though he did not offer specifics of what it would cost. He proposed investment tax cuts that would put more cash in the pockets of small business owners and a new program that would take $30 billion from the fund used to bail out troubled banks and automakers, and redirect it toward an initiative to encourage community banks to lend to small businesses.
He set a goal of doubling exports over the next five years - an increase that he said would support two million jobs. And, as he pledged to do earlier in the week, Obama also outlined a series of proposals intended to help the middle class, including new tax credits for child-care and a cap on student loan payments for recent graduates.
And Obama offered a very public show of confidence in one of the architects of his economic plan: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, whose close identification with Wall Street has made him a focus of some of the populist anger directed at the White House. When Obama strode into the chamber of the House of Representatives to deliver the address, he stopped to face Geithner, who had just spent the day getting grilled on Capitol Hill and put both hands encouragingly on the secretary's shoulders.
Strikingly, for a president who is prosecuting two wars and trying to protect the country against the threat of a terrorist attack, Obama spent only nine minutes in an address that lasted more than an hour on foreign policy. He renewed one of the most popular promises of his campaign for election, to bring the troops home for Iraq, saying "Make no mistake - this war is ending, and all of our troops are coming home."
But he devoted only one paragraph to a far less popular decision, escalating the troop levels in Afghanistan. "There will be difficult days ahead," Obama said. "But I am confident we will succeed."
As have presidents before him, Obama grappled with how to describe the state of the union. In the end, he settled on the formulation that many of his predecessors have used, with a twist: "Despite our hardships, the state of our union is strong."