6 The Hampton Roads Messenger


Volume 10 Number 6


President Obama Gives His Final State of the Union Address


PRESIDENT OBAMA: Mr. Speaker,


Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, my fellow Americans:


Tonight marks the eighth year that I’ve come here to report on the State of the Union. And for this final one, I’m going to try to make it a little shorter. (Applause.) I know some of you are antsy to get back to Iowa. (Laughter.) I’ve been there. I’ll be shaking hands afterwards if you want some tips. (Laughter.)


And I understand that because it’s an election season, expectations for what we will achieve this year are low. But, Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the constructive approach that you and the other leaders took at the end of last year to pass a budget and make tax cuts permanent for working families. So I hope we can work together this year on some bipartisan priorities like criminal justice reform — (applause) — and helping people who are battling prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse. (Applause.) So, who knows, we might surprise the cynics again.


But tonight, I want to go easy on the traditional list of proposals for the year ahead. Don’t worry, I’ve got plenty, from helping students learn to write computer code to personalizing medical treatments for patients. And I will keep pushing for progress on the work that I believe still needs to be done.


Fixing a broken immigration system.


(Applause.) Protecting our kids from gun violence. (Applause.) Equal pay for equal work. (Applause.) Paid leave. (Applause.) Raising the minimum wage. (Applause.)


All


these things still matter to hardworking families. They’re still the right thing to do. And I won’t let up until they get done.


But for my final address to this chamber, I


don’t want to just talk about next year. I want to focus on the next five years, the next 10 years, and beyond. I want to focus on our future.


We live in a time of extraordinary change


— change that’s reshaping the way we live, the way we work, our planet, our place in the world. It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families.


It promises


education for girls in the most remote villages, but also connects terrorists plotting an ocean away.


It’s change that can broaden opportunity,


or widen inequality. And whether we like it or not, the pace of this change will only accelerate.


America has been through big changes


before — wars and depression, the influx of new immigrants, workers fighting for a fair deal, movements to expand civil rights.


Each


time, there have been those who told us to fear the future; who claimed we could slam the brakes on change; who promised to restore past glory if we just got some group or idea that was threatening America under control. And each time, we overcame those fears. We did not, in the words of Lincoln, adhere to the “dogmas of the quiet past.” Instead we thought anew, and acted anew. We made change work for us, always extending America’s promise outward, to the next frontier, to more people.


because we did — because we saw opportunity where others saw only peril — we emerged stronger and better than before.


What was true then can be true now. Our unique strengths as a nation — our optimism and work ethic, our spirit of discovery, our diversity, our commitment to rule of law — these things give us everything we need to ensure prosperity and security for generations to come.


progress these past seven years.


In fact, it’s in that spirit that we have made That’s how


we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations. (Applause.)


That’s how we


reformed our health care system, and reinvented our energy sector. (Applause.) That’s how we delivered more care and benefits to our troops coming home and our veterans. (Applause.) That’s how we secured the freedom in every state to marry the person we love. (Applause.)


But such progress is not inevitable. It’s


the result of choices we make together. And we face such choices right now. Will we respond to the changes of our time with fear, turning inward as a nation, turning against each other as a people? Or will we face the future with confidence in who we are, in what we stand for, in the incredible things that we can do together?


So let’s talk about the future, and four big


questions that I believe we as a country have to answer — regardless of who the next President is, or who controls the next Congress.


First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy? (Applause.)


Second, how do we make technology


work for us, and not against us — especially when it comes to solving urgent challenges like climate change? (Applause.)


Third, how do we keep America safe and lead the world without becoming its policeman? (Applause.)


And finally, how can we make our


politics reflect what’s best in us, and not what’s worst?


Let me start with the economy, and a


basic fact: The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world. (Applause.) We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private sector job creation in history. (Applause.) More than 14 million new jobs, the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s, an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever.


(Applause.) That’s just part


of a manufacturing surge that’s created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters. (Applause.)


Anyone claiming that America’s


economy is in decline is peddling fiction. (Applause.) Now, what is true — and the reason that a lot of Americans feel anxious — is that the economy has been changing in profound ways, changes that started long before the Great Recession hit; changes that have not let up.


Today, technology doesn’t just replace


jobs on the assembly line, but any job where work can be automated. Companies in a global economy can locate anywhere, and they face tougher competition. As a result, workers have less leverage for a raise. Companies have less loyalty to their communities. And more and more wealth and income is concentrated at the very top.


All these trends have squeezed workers, even when they have jobs; even when the economy is growing. It’s made it harder for a hardworking family to pull itself out of poverty, harder for young people to start their careers, tougher for workers to retire when they want to. And although none of these trends are unique to America, they do offend our uniquely American belief that everybody who works hard should get a fair shot.


For the past seven years, our goal has been a growing economy that works also better for everybody. We’ve made progress.


But


we need to make more. And despite all the political arguments that we’ve had these past few years, there are actually some areas where Americans broadly agree.


And We agree that real opportunity requires


every American to get the education and training they need to land a good-paying job. The bipartisan reform of No Child Left Behind was an important start, and together, we’ve increased early childhood education, lifted high school graduation rates to new highs, boosted graduates in fields like engineering. In the coming years, we should build on that progress, by providing Pre-K for all and — (applause) — offering every student the hands-on computer science and math classes that make them job-ready on day one. We should recruit and support more great teachers for our kids. (Applause.)


for every


And we have to make college affordable American.


(Applause.) No


hardworking student should be stuck in the red. We’ve already reduced student loan payments to 10 percent of a borrower’s income.


And


that’s good. But now, we’ve actually got to cut the cost of college. (Applause.) Providing two years of community college at no cost for every responsible student is one of the best ways to do that, and I’m going to keep fighting to get that started this year.


(Applause.)


the right thing to do. (Applause.) But a great education isn’t all we need in


this new economy. We also need benefits and protections that provide a basic measure of security.


It’s not too much of a stretch to say


that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place, with a health and retirement package for 30 years are sitting in this chamber. (Laughter.) For everyone else, especially folks in their 40s and 50s, saving for retirement or bouncing back from job loss has gotten a lot tougher.


Americans understand that at some point in their careers, in this new economy, they may have to retool and they may have to retrain. But they shouldn’t lose what they’ve already worked so hard to build in the process.


That’s why Social Security and Medicare are more important than ever. We shouldn’t weaken them; we should strengthen them. (Applause.)


retirement, basic benefits should be just as mobile as everything else is today.


And for Americans short of That,


by the way, is what the Affordable Care Act is all about. It’s about filling the gaps in employer-based care so that when you lose a job, or you go back to school, or you strike out and launch that new business, you’ll still have coverage. Nearly 18 million people have gained coverage so far.


(Applause.) And in


the process, health care inflation has slowed. And our businesses have created jobs every single month since it became law.


Now, I’m guessing we won’t agree on health care anytime soon. (Applause.) A little applause right there. Laughter.) Just a guess. But there should be other ways parties can work together to improve economic security. Say a hardworking American loses his job — we shouldn’t just make sure that he can get unemployment insurance; we should make sure that program encourages him to retrain for a business that’s ready to hire him. If that new job doesn’t pay as much, there should be a system of wage insurance in place so that he can still pay his bills. And even if he’s going from job to job, he should still be able to save for retirement and take his savings with him. That’s the way we make the new economy work better for everybody.


I also know Speaker Ryan has talked about his interest in tackling poverty. America is about giving everybody willing to work a chance, a hand up. And I’d welcome a serious discussion about strategies we can all support, like expanding tax cuts for low-income workers who don’t have children. (Applause.)


But there are some areas where we just


have to be honest — it has been difficult to find agreement over the last seven years. And a lot of them fall under the category of what role the government should play in making sure the system’s not rigged in favor of the wealthiest and biggest corporations.


(Applause.) And


it’s an honest disagreement, and the American people have a choice to make.


I believe a thriving (Applause.) private is the lifeblood of our economy. sector I think


there are outdated regulations that need to be changed. to be cut.


There is red tape that needs There you go! Yes!


(Applause.) But after years now of record corporate profits, working families won’t get more opportunity or bigger paychecks just by letting big banks or big oil or hedge funds make their own rules at everybody else’s expense.


(Applause.) Middle-class families


are not going to feel more secure because we allowed attacks on collective bargaining to go unanswered. Food Stamp recipients did not cause the financial crisis; recklessness on Wall Street did. (Applause.) Immigrants aren’t the principal reason wages haven’t gone up; those decisions are made in the boardrooms that all too often put quarterly earnings over long-term returns. It’s sure not the average family watching tonight that avoids paying taxes through offshore accounts. (Applause.)


The point is, I believe that in this In new


economy, workers and start-ups and small businesses need more of a voice, not less. The rules should work for them. (Applause.) And I’m not alone in this. This year I plan to lift up the many businesses who’ve figured out that doing right by their workers or their customers or their communities ends up being good for their shareholders.


(Applause.) And I want


to spread those best practices across America. That’s part of a brighter future. (Applause.)


In fact, it turns out many of our best


corporate citizens are also our most creative. And this brings me to the second big question we as a country have to answer: How do we reignite that spirit of innovation to meet our biggest challenges?


It’s


Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. (Laughter.) We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight. And 12 years later, we were walking on the moon. (Applause.)


DNA.


February 2016


Now, that spirit of discovery is in our America is Thomas Edison and the


Wright Brothers and George Washington Carver.


America is Grace Hopper and


Katherine Johnson and Sally Ride. America is every immigrant and entrepreneur from Boston to Austin to Silicon Valley, racing to shape a better world. (Applause.) That’s who we are.


And over the past seven years, we’ve


nurtured that spirit. We’ve protected an open Internet, and taken bold new steps to get more students and low-income Americans online. (Applause.) We’ve launched next-generation manufacturing hubs, and online tools that give an entrepreneur everything he or she needs to start a business in a single day. But we can do so much more.


Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health


the strongest resources had in over a decade. (Applause.) that they’ve So tonight,


I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control. (Applause.) For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all. (Applause.)


same level of commitment when it comes to developing clean energy sources.


Medical research is critical. We need the (Applause.)


Look, if anybody still wants to dispute the science around climate change, have at it. You will be pretty lonely, because you’ll be debating our military, most of America’s business leaders, the majority of the American people, almost the entire scientific community, and 200 nations around the world who agree it’s a problem and intend to solve it. (Applause.)


But even if — even if the planet wasn’t at stake, even if 2014 wasn’t the warmest year on record — until 2015 turned out to be even hotter — why would we want to pass up the chance for American businesses to produce and sell the energy of the future? (Applause.)


Listen, seven years ago, we made the


single biggest investment in clean energy in our history. Here are the results. In fields from Iowa to Texas, wind power is now cheaper than dirtier, conventional power. On rooftops from Arizona to New York, solar is saving Americans tens of millions of dollars a year on their energy bills, and employs more Americans than coal — in jobs that pay better than average. We’re taking steps to give homeowners the freedom to generate and store their own energy — something, by the way, that environmentalists and Tea Partiers have teamed up to support. And meanwhile, we’ve cut our imports of foreign oil by nearly 60 percent, and cut carbon pollution more than any other country on Earth. (Applause.) Gas under two bucks a gallon ain’t bad, either. (Applause.)


Now we’ve got to accelerate the transition away from old, dirtier energy sources.


Rather


than subsidize the past, we should invest in the future — especially in communities that rely on fossil fuels. We do them no favor when we don’t show them where the trends are going. That’s why I’m going to push to change the way we manage our oil and coal resources, so that they better reflect the costs they impose on taxpayers and our planet. And that way, we put money back into those communities, and put tens of thousands of Americans to work building a 21st century transportation system. (Applause.)


overnight.


Now, none of this is going to happen And, yes, there are plenty of


entrenched interests who want to protect the status quo. But the jobs we’ll create, the money we’ll save, the planet we’ll preserve — that is the kind of future our kids and our grandkids deserve. And it’s within our grasp.


Climate change is just one of many issues where our security is linked to the rest of the world.


And that’s why the third big question


that we have to answer together is how to keep America safe and strong without either isolating ourselves or trying to nation-build everywhere there’s a problem.


I told you earlier all the talk of America’s


economic decline is political hot air. Well, so is all the rhetoric you hear about our enemies getting stronger and America getting weaker. Let me tell you something. The United States of America is the most powerful nation on Earth. Period. (Applause.) Period. It’s not even close. It’s not even close. (Applause.)


It’s not even


close. We spend more on our military than the next eight nations combined. Our troops are the finest fighting force in the history of the world. (Applause.) No nation attacks us directly, or our allies, because they know that’s the path to


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