Facing a low approval rating and an uncertain election season, President Barack Obama approached congress with his third state of the union address since he took office.
Hanging on every word, Freshman like Amanda Pasterchick gathered in the Plangere building to hear the President map out this upcoming election year, “Ask yourselves what you can do to bring jobs back to your country, and our country will do everything we can to help you succeed,” he stated while promising there will no longer be any tax breaks for companies that outsource, ensuring a better unemployment rating than the disappointing 8%, and vowed to work harder on finding cleaner energy sources.
Many people have become skeptical of Obama and his platform of, “change,” which the President addressed in a sound byte that is sure to be burning up the air waves of every political broadcast: “Washington is broken.”
The president addressed the grave state of America and pointed out that there is something wrong in a country where a CEO pays less in taxes than his secretary, “this isn’t about being a republican or democrat…. It’s about common sense.”
“I spoke tonight about the deficit of trust between Main Street and Wall Street, but the divide between this city and the rest of this country is at least as bad, and it seems to get worse every year,” The President said in a fiery statement.
Obama has taken a lot of heat in the past for not being courageous enough to stand up for his own political stances and has been called a simple puppet by some, but tonight he assured Americans that the days of corruption in congress is over.
“Some of what is broken, is the way congress does business these days; send me a bill that bans insider trading in congress, and I will sign it tomorrow,” the president said to rousing applause, “lets limit any elected official from owning stocks in industries they impact.”
Fiery Obama also took on the executive branch calling it, “inefficient, out dated, and remote.” Several times he challenged congressman on sticky issues and their inability to make progress with them, “if you put a bill on my desk, I’ll sign it tomorrow!”
So how does Obama plan on fixing the ailing economy and stagnant unemployment rating? The answer is simple, he can’t, not as long as congress refuses to find some sort of middle ground, “We need to end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction, that politics is about clinging to rigid ideologies instead of building consensus around common sense ideas.”
While CNN Political Analyst David Gergen called it a shrewd speech, members of the student body found it to be the only effective way for the President to reach a divided congress, “He hasn’t been able to get anything done because congress won’t work with him. It’s one big stale mate and I respect President Obama for not side lining that issue,” stated senior Robert Ennis.
However President Obama did end his speech on an optimistic note, “As long as we’re joined in common purpose, as long as we maintain our common resolve, our journey moves forward, our future is hopeful, and the state of our Union will always be strong.”
Read the full State of the Union speech here
