WONKBOOK'S roundup of analysis of Pres Obama's State of the Union Speech, from the Washington Post.....
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Wednesday, January 29, 2014 |
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Welcome to Wonkbook, Wonkblog's morning policy news primer by
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Wonkbook's Number of the Day: 6,786. That's
how many words were in President Barack Obama's State of the Union address last night, at least in the version as prepared for delivery.
Wonkbook's Graph of the Day: The language of the State of the Union speeches.
Wonkbook's Top 5 Stories:
(1) a summary of last night's State of the Union speech; with special
attention to (2) the role of executive actions; (3) policies to address
inequality; (4) meanwhile, a look and the economy; and (5) why Congress
is surprisingly functional.
1. Top story: A
starting-point summary of last night's State of the Union
What Obama said in the 2014 State of the Union. "President
Obama sought Tuesday to restore public confidence and trust in his
presidency after a dispiriting year, pledging to use his White House
authority with new force to advance an agenda that Congress has largely
failed to support. In his fifth prime-time State of the Union address,
Obama returned to a familiar problem--Washington's bitter and
stalemated politics, the complaint that drove his insurgent campaign for
president in 2008. But now, after five weary years in office, it was
clear he saw it differently. Instead of pledging to fix the mess, the
president was now promising to find ways around it, and change policies
on his own authority."
David Nakamura and David A. Fahrenthold in The Washington Post.
Transcript: Full text of Obama's 2014 State of the Union address.
The Washington Post.
Watch: The full video.
The New York Times.
Transcript: The Republican response, by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, to the State of the Union address.
The Washington Post.
Watch: The full video.
PBS NewsHour.
Liveblogs: Read the continuous coverage provided by
The Washington Post, The New York Times and
The Wall Street Journal.
The facts: Glenn Kessler checks the speech line-by-line.
The Washington Post.
The profile of Sergeant Remsburg, the veteran featured in last night's speech, that you should read. "In
more than four years in office, Mr. Obama has met privately with nearly
1,000 men and women injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet his repeated
encounters with Sergeant
Remsburg stand out for bringing a president face to face with the
resilience of the wounded and the brutal costs of the wars...Aides could
not name any other wounded service member whom Mr. Obama has met three
times, nor any other who first stood before the commander in chief in
battle-ready prime."
Jackie Calmes in The New York Times.
Looking back: Obama's 2013 State of the Union proposals: What flopped and what succeeded.
Glenn Kessler in The Washington Post.
Multiple GOP responses to State of the Union: Are they a sign of party division? "When
it comes to rebutting President Obama's national address Tuesday night,
Republicans have four different approaches from four different corners
of the party's ideological wings. This four-vs.-one approach, to some,
is the result of the expanding media universe that allows many different
views to be heard, reaching so many different voters. Yet others see
the various responses as a sign of a divided Republican Party that
cannot unite around the single idea or a single voice to respond to
Obama's State of the Union address."
Paul Kane and Robert Costa in The Washington Post.
How Obama dealt with Obamacare in the address. "Obama
focused instead on the benefits of the law that already have taken
effect, and their potential to protect Americans from crippling medical
expenses. He likened the health care law to proposals he made on
subjects including raising the minimum wage, expanding the Earned
Income Tax Credit and boosting retirement savings...Obama also
highlighted the contributions of Democratic Kentucky Gov. Steve
Beshear."
Jeffrey Young in The Huffington Post.
@sarahkliff:
What's different about this SOTU: Obama can actually talk about people
gaining from the insurance expansion. Not true up til now.
How the State of the Union could make a difference on immigration reform. "With
those recent developments in mind, House Democrats told reporters
Tuesday that they anticipate Obama will be "respectful" of the
GOP's apparent thawing in his State of the Union. They don't believe
he'll challenge Republicans on the issue, make too explicit demands or
announce any executive orders that would indicate he plans to circumvent
Congress on immigration policy."
Dylan Scott in Talking Points Memo.
@jimgeraghty: Cold night for all the diehard State of the Union fans tailgating in the U.S. Capitol parking lot.
Gun control was almost gone. "A
year after making a call for his broad gun control agenda the emotional
big finish, Obama devoted just two sentences to preventing gun
violence...The gun control movement has focused its attention away from
Washington, to the state and local level where progress can be easier to
come by."
Reid J. Epstein in Politico.
History: When the State of the Union was controversial. "A
little more than 100 years ago, President Woodrow Wilson had
Washington, D.C., "agape" at his decision to deliver the State of the
Union address in-person to Congress. It was the first time in more than a
century that a president had the gall to do such a thing. Since the
early
1800s, the address was delivered in writing."
Aaron Blake in The Washington Post.
History chart: The language of the State of the Union speeches. Kennedy Elliott in The Washington Post.
THE WASHINGTON POST: Opportunities to work together. "[What
ideas] have at least a chance at passage: updating patent law,
authority to pursue tariff-slashing trade deals in Asia and Europe and
Mr. Obama's welcome pitch for housing finance reform all should
win some GOP backing. The president proposed expanding the earned-income
tax credit to include childless workers, which would improve work
incentives and lift many single men and women out of poverty. This idea
also has the virtue, politically, of taking what was originally a GOP
program and reshaping it in a way that's at least not inconsistent with
recent anti-poverty proposals from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.). If
Republicans are serious about their avowed concern for poverty and
inequality,
they'll take the president up on this proposal. Immigration reform is
another area where both parties should be able to find common ground."
The Washington Post Editorial Board.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: The state of our union is diminished. "Obama's
speech on Tuesday night acknowledged the obvious: Congress has become a
dead end for most of the big, muscular uses of government to redress
income inequality and improve the economy for all, because of implacable
Republican opposition. As a
result, the remainder of Mr. Obama's presidency will be largely devoted
to a series of smaller actions that the White House can perform on its
own...But he left out an executive ban on discrimination by contractors
against employees based on sexual orientation and gender identity. That
would have made a strong statement about fairness in spending taxpayer
money."
The New York Times Editorial Board.
@ObsoleteDogma: Did I miss the part where Obama called for a Progressive Kristallnacht?
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL: Pitch number six. "The
State of the Union address in the sixth year of any Presidency is
rarely compelling. The White House tries to portray a renewed sense of
vigor and perhaps a fresh proposal or two, while the public has begun to
tune the
familiar man out...The puzzle of the speech is that he far spent less
time on the issues that might get done--immigration and tax reform,
freer trade--than he did on the liberal priorities that are unlikely to
pass."
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board.
FAVREAU: How Obama prepares for the State of the Union. "I
have worked on five State of the Union addresses, and they never get
easier. The President starts thinking about this speech in late
November, and each year, he would begin with a few bold pronouncements:
"This will not be a laundry list!" and "This
one will be shorter than all the rest!" By the weekend before, we'd be
cutting furiously, fending off additions from the rest of the
administration (and the President!) in a desperate attempt to keep this
monster under an hour. Obama himself would clock consecutive 2 a.m.
nights editing and revising. And if anyone's looked at the White House
Instagram feed lately, you'll notice that Director of Speechwriting Cody
Keenan hasn't had time to shave a single hair from his face since late
in 2013."
Jon Favreau in The Daily Beast.
@TPCarney: Citizenship means letting Obama read all your emails.
COHN: Who are you calling a lame duck? "[T]here
may yet be opportunities. In the speech, Obama mentioned the need to
reauthorize spending on highway and water infrastructure--both easy
vehicles for infrastructure spending...[Incremental action from Obama]
can showcase and reward the most
successful programs--many of them already in operation, in conservative
states like Georgia and Oklahoma. And those examples can build support
for greater initiatives, even if it will take a future president to sign
them into law."
Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic.
CHAIT: What Obama is really trying to do in the State of the Union address. "Those
low approval ratings provide the impetus for Obama's splashy new
message. Everything about Obama's messaging -- the image of vigorous
unilateral action, the laser focus on jobs, the small but popular policy
initiatives attached to it -- serve the
goal of patching up the president's standing and framing the Washington
story in the most favorable terms possible. The State of the Union
address is not an effort to fundamentally reorient the administration's
strategy. It's a campaign to mend the political damage from the botched
Obamacare launch."
Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine.
@Goldfarb: The call to expand the EITC may be the most important and creative idea in the SOTU speech
KLEIN: The ground has shifted beneath Obama. "Obama
distilled his vision into a series of small-bore ideas he's mostly
presented before on ending tax loopholes, creating manufacturing hubs,
increasing the minimum wage, and improving job training, among
others. Though he urged Congress to act on these priorities (along with
immigration, climate change, unemployment insurance, and universal
preschool), he did so without much expectation that anything would pass
through a Congress in which Republicans control the House of
Representatives. He couldn't even muster up much passion to deliver his
ritual indignant scoldings of GOP intransigence. Instead, he has
resigned himself to bypassing Congress and taking limited executive
actions where he can."
Philip A. Klein in The Washington Examiner.
BARRO: Four ideas Obama should have pushed in the State of the Union. "Marijuana:
Obama could have used the State of the Union to announce that he was
directing the Drug Enforcement Administration not to interfere with the
legal marijuana trade in Colorado and Washington, and to call on
Congress to repeal federal laws
against marijuana...Intellectual property: Obama could have laid down a
marker: That the purpose of intellectual property law is not to reward
and enrich inventors but to elevate standards of living. That principle
would be a basis for a much broader rollback of IP protections."
Josh Barro in Business Insider.
BERNSTEIN: First impressions. "The
challenge for the President was to avoid ticking through a list ideas
that had no chance of going anywhere. I think he largely avoided
that...[T]he President cannot and should not let Congress block his
every move and good for the administration for trying to find other ways
to help working
families overcome opportunity barriers in our increasingly unequal
economy."
Jared Bernstein on his blog.
In memoriam interlude: Pete Seeger, "Where have all the flowers gone?"
Top opinion
EMANUEL: Obamacare vs. the Republican alternative. "The
largest difference is in cost control. Currently, employer-sponsored
health insurance is tax free; the Republican plan would make employees
pay income tax on at least 35 percent of what their company pays
for their plan. The idea is to make patients pay more for their
coverage, giving them an incentive to choose cheaper health insurance
plans with more deductibles and co-payments, which, in turn, would
encourage them to shop around for cheaper tests and treatments and forgo
unnecessary ones."
Ezekiel Emanuel in The New York Times.
ORSZAG: Why isn't comparative effectiveness research getting done? "[O]nly
37 percent of the institute's research funding has gone to comparing
two or more treatments (including usual care or the option of doing
nothing), according to a new report by Neera Tanden, Ezekiel Emanuel,
Topher Spiro, Emily Oshima Lee and Thomas
Huelskoetter of the Center for American Progress...[T]he Institute of
Medicine has already identified the top 25 topics that should be
assessed. Unfortunately, out of the 284 studies the Patient-Centered
Outcomes Research Institute has funded to date, only 34 (or 12 percent)
address these priority topics."
Peter Orszag in Bloomberg.
PORTER: Why we need a New Deal to tackle long-term unemployment. "Thirty-nine
states used $1.3 billion from the fiscal stimulus package passed in
2009 to create more than 260,000 jobs by subsidizing private employers. A
subsequent evaluation of the program found that two-thirds of these
jobs would not have existed without the subsidy.
Many of those jobs went to people who were difficult to employ,
including workers who had been jobless for a long time, people on
welfare and workers with criminal records. Yet after the program ended
in September 2010, 37 percent of the formerly subsidized workers kept
their jobs."
Eduardo Porter in The New York Times.
SUNSTEIN: Why economic mobility is stuck in neutral. "hey
find that certain factors are highly correlated with increased
mobility. Areas with low percentages of single parents show higher
mobility. There are also strong correlations between upward mobility and
high-quality K-12 school systems. Higher mobility is highly
correlated with indices of "social capital."...Levels of mobility are
unusually low in regions with larger African-American populations. But
whites show similarly low levels of mobility in such areas. The
researchers suggest a possible explanation: Areas with large
African-American populations are highly segregated, and segregation
might have adverse effects on mobility for both groups."
Cass R. Sunstein in Bloomberg.
EDSALL: How should economics respond to Piketty? "There
are a number of key arguments in Piketty's book. One is that the
six-decade period of growing equality in western nations - starting
roughly with the onset of World War I and extending into the early 1970s
- was unique and highly unlikely to be repeated. That period, Piketty
suggests, represented an exception to the more deeply rooted pattern of
growing inequality."
Thomas B. Edsall in The New York Times.
DAVIDSON: Building a Harley faster. "Harley's
York factory represents an alternative to the common narrative of
American manufacturing. In recent decades, countless sleepy Northern
manufacturers suddenly awoke to global competition. They often responded
by breaking their unions, by moving to a Southern right-to-work state
or
out of the country altogether, and by employing robots on the assembly
line. This strategy has been repeated so many times that even as overall
manufacturing output has grown by nearly 25 percent, manufacturing jobs
have fallen by 30 percent since 2000."
Adam Davidson in The New York Times.
SWAGEL: Challenges for the Yellen Fed. "If
a strong enough economy can bring people off the sidelines and back
into the labor force, then there is more slack in the labor market than
implied by the recent decline in the unemployment rate. In this case,
the Fed could maintain easy monetary conditions in an attempt to drive
up
wages and the participation rate...If inflation picks up, however, this
would signal that the labor market has reached a new normal in which
wage and inflation pressures arise with lower participation and higher
unemployment than in the past."
Philip Swagel in The New York Times.
Labor interlude: This college football team is trying to form a union.
2. The executive-action strategy
Obama prepared to avoid Congress, go it alone on carrying out modest initiatives. "For
the first time since taking office, Obama spoke to Congress on Tuesday
evening from a clear position of confrontation. The areas he identified
for possible cooperation with a divided Congress
have shrunk, leaving an agenda filled out by a growing number of modest
initiatives that he intends to carry out alone...The tone and approach
reflect the White House's conclusion that Obama spent too much time last
year in conflict with recalcitrant lawmakers, rather than using the
unilateral powers in his grasp...But the strategy risks further
antagonizing Congress and resting part of his legacy on executive
actions that do not have the permanence, or breadth, of major
legislation."
Scott
Wilson in The Washington Post.
Key explainer: Here are 7 things Obama just said he'd do without Congress.
Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
The Republican critique of Obama's executive-action push. ""He's
governing by edict," said Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.). Republicans
concede Mr. Obama has the authority to do things like raise the minimum
wage for employees at federal contractors.
But Mr. McCain argues such moves poison the well of bipartisanship: "He
has the authority, but it's the spirit of the Constitution that he is
violating.""
Janet Hook in The Wall Street Journal.
Obama ordered a raise in the minimum wage for government contract workers. "President
Obama will announce in the State of the Union address Tuesday that he
will use his executive power to increase the minimum wage to $10.10 per
hour for workers on new government contracts, fulfilling a top demand by
liberal lawmakers and
groups, according to a White House document...A survey by the National
Employment Law Project of contractors who manufacture military uniforms,
provide food and janitorial services, and truck goods found that 75
percent of them earn less than $10 per hour. One in five was dependent
on Medicaid for health care, and 14 percent used food stamps. Obama's
action will only slowly trickle out into workers' paychecks, beginning
in 2015 and at the start of new contracts."
Zachary A. Goldfarb in The Washington Post.
How can he do that? "President
Obama would issue an executive order giving preference in awarding
federal contracts to companies that pay their workers at least $10.10
per hour. The rules would only affect new contracts signed in 2015 or
later (and not companies on existing contracts)...By some estimates,
around 200,000 people
-- though this would only happen gradually, over time, as new federal
contracts get awarded. That's about 10 percent of the federal
contracting workforce."
Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
Boehner didn't like Obama's decision. ""I
suspect the president has the authority to raise the minimum wage for
those dealing with federal contracts. But let's understand something:
This affects not one current contract, it only affects future contracts
with the federal government. And so I think the question is, how many
people, Mr. President, will this executive action actually help? I
suspect the answer is somewhere close to zero.""
Ed O'Keefe in The Washington Post.
Obama also ordered the creation of a new middle-class savings tool. "The
administration didn't provide many details about the new accounts,
which President Barack Obama announced in his State of the Union
address. The accounts would be called "myRAs," and be structured like a
Roth Individual Retirement Account. Like
savings bonds, the investment would be backed by the federal government.
The White House plans to create the accounts through an executive
action, meaning it wouldn't need congressional approval. The Treasury
Department is expected to encourage employers to offer the investment
vehicles to employees who would be automatically enrolled unless they
specifically elected not to participate."
Damian Paletta and Anne Tergesen in The Wall Street Journal.
We also got an executive action on education.
"Obama talked about one such initiative on Thursday night. It's called
"ConnectED"--a program to vastly increase the broadband access for
public schools. The initiative is possible because funding comes from a
small fee on cell phone bills, one that the FCC can set without
congressional authorization. It's not much money to the typical
consumer--the figure I've seen suggests it'd be no more than $12 per
person over the course of three years. But that money can make a huge
difference to the schools."
Jonathan Cohn in The New Republic.
The limits of executive authority. "[W]ith
some notable exceptions, only so much can be delivered through the
president's pen if he is not using it to sign legislation. He cannot
raise the minimum wage for most workers, overhaul the Social Security
system, grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants,
reorder
spending and taxes, or even make necessary fixes to the health care
law...At the same time, anyone who succeeds him can use the stroke of a
pen to undo Mr. Obama's actions just as Mr. Obama did to some Bush-era
policies one day after his inauguration in 2009."
Carl Hulse in The New York Times.
Another drawback on executive actions. "Because
executive orders are intended first and foremost to direct the conduct
of the executive branch, they must be sensitive to diverse opinions and
interests within the executive branch. Typically, the interagency
consultation needed to produce executive orders is neither quick nor
simple."
William A. Galston in The Wall Street Journal.
Geniuses interlude: Watch Bill Gates lose a chess match in 79 seconds.
3. Inequality in focus
Inequality was one of the core themes of the State of the Union.
"President Barack Obama pledged to address deepening inequality in the
US, with a volley of directives covering everything from higher wages
for low-paid federal workers to new government-backed retirement
accounts...The
minimum wage move dovetails with the primary theme of the speech and Mr
Obama's second term - his campaign to reduce growing inequality in the
US, although the speech focused more on creating "opportunity" than on
the gap between the rich and poor. After four years of economic growth
"corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those
at the top have never done better. But average wages have barely budged.
Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.""
Richard
McGregor in The Financial Times.
Obama won't talk about the biggest thing he's done to fix inequality: Raise taxes. ""Changing
tax rates is likely to have small effects on supply of labor and
capital and on output," the Congressional Research Service reported
earlier this month. Wealth managers dealing
Lydia DePillis in The Washington Post.
Obama also proposed widening eligibility for the EITC. "The
way EITC works now is that it offers a substantial economic boost to a
population largely composed of working single moms and some married
couples with kids, but very little for people who don't have kids at
home. As this report from the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities details, changing that to make EITC benefits more broadly
available would do a lot to boost incomes in a way that encourages and
rewards work and employment. They also think it might boost marriage
rates, by boosting the incomes of male low-wage workers and making
marriage and family formation more feasible."
Matthew Yglesias in Slate.
Meanwhile, Americans feel they are slipping out of the middle class. "If
you actually take a close look at the numbers, it turns out that of the
people who identified as middle class in 2008, nearly a third of them
now identify as lower middle or lower class...Class self-identification
is deeply tied up with culture, not just income, and
this decline means that a lot of people--about one in six Americans--now
think of themselves as not just suffering an income drop, but suffering
an income drop they consider permanent. Permanent enough that they now
live in a different neighborhood, associate with different friends, and
apparently consider themselves part of a different culture than they did
just six years ago."
Kevin Drum in Mother Jones.
Internet interlude: An award show for GIFs.
4. Meanwhile, mixed economic data
Durable goods orders tumble 4.3 percent, suggesting business caution. "Economists
surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires had a median forecast that
durable-goods orders would rise by 1.5% in December. The decline, the
biggest since July, was driven by a sharp drop in
demand for civilian aircraft. Excluding the volatile transportation
sector, durable-goods orders fell 1.6%--itself the biggest decline since
March."
Josh Mitchell in The Wall Street Journal.
U.S. home prices rise in November. "The
home price index covering 10 major U.S. cities increased 13.8% in the
year ended in November, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller home price
report. The 20-city price index increased 13.7%, close to the 13.8%
advance expected by economists. The two indexes indicate home prices are
back to levels seen in mid-2004."
Kathleen Madigan in The Wall Street Journal.
Global markets are freaking out. Here's what the Fed should say. "The
worldwide rout is unlikely to deter the Fed from continuing to reduce
the amount of money it is pumping into the U.S. economy by $10 billion
to $65 billion a month as officials convene in Washington Tuesday and
Wednesday. The central bank wants to move
deliberately, minutes of its last meeting show, out of "concern about
the potential for an unintended tightening of financial conditions."
That covers both the United States and the rest of the world."
Ylan Q. Mui in The Washington Post.
Out of bounds interlude: "
I'll break you in half. Like a boy."
5. Congress is working. Wait, what?
Republicans surrender on debt ceiling imminent. "House
Republicans are getting ready to surrender: There will be no serious
fight over the debt limit. The most senior figures in the House
Republican Conference are privately acknowledging that they
will almost certainly have to pass what's called a clean debt ceiling
increase in the next few months, abandoning the central fight that has
defined their three-year majority...The reason for the shift in dynamics
in this fight is clear. Congress has raised the debt limit twice in a
row without drastic policy concessions."
Jake Sherman and John Bresnahan in Politico.
Graph: The $956 billion farm bill, in one graph.
Brad Plumer in The Washington Post.
House poised to vote on farm bill. "The
House cleared the way for a Wednesday showdown vote on the new farm
bill agreement, even as Republicans blocked Democratic efforts to
dedicate a portion of the savings to help pay for extended unemployment
benefits for the
long-term jobless. The 222-194 vote Tuesday made for a sharp contrast
with the broad support now enjoyed by the farm bill itself. And after
two years of struggle, the Agriculture Committee leadership is
increasingly confident that the giant measure will now prevail--almost
exactly six months after it was upended by the same chamber last June."
David Rogers in Politico.
Reading material interlude: The best sentences Wonkblog read today.
Wonkblog Roundup
Did Sen. Coburn lose his cancer doctor because of Obamacare?
Sarah Kliff.
Here are 7 policies Obama just said he'd pursue without Congress.
Brad Plumer.
The $956 billion farm bill, in one graph.
Brad Plumer.
Obama won't talk about the biggest thing he's done to fix inequality: Raise taxes.
Lydia DePillis.
Global markets are freaking out. Here's what the Fed should say.
Ylan Q. Mui.
Obama is boosting the minimum wage for federal contractors. Here's how.
Brad Plumer.
Et Cetera
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Obama Reaffirms Commitment to Climate Action in State of the Union
