President Obama Talks 2014
Connor Strange
Staff Writer
This Tuesday, President Barack Obama made his State of the Union address for the beginning of the year, outlining his future plans for matters such as health care, immigration and inequality.
The State of the Union address is an annual presentation by the U.S. President to discuss pressing matters to the nation’s people, and to communicate the changes coming down the pipeline.
This year, Obama was very enthusiastic about a dynamic 2014.
“Let’s make this a year of action,” Obama said.
His spiel was all about rebuilding the trust in America’s government by starting the ball rolling on new projects, one of which was the ever-present issue of immigration. He declared that he wanted to reform the “broken” system, yet the entire duration spent on the topic was filled with vague verbiage and minimal focus on why the changes were needed.
Though the immigration discussion was quick and unclear, Obama made sure to showcase his opinion concerning women in the workforce. He said that the treatment of women was unfair as opposed to men, especially the issue of a lower average pay rate for female employees. An embarrassment, he called it. Though that viewpoint is agreed upon by many, it’s hardly anything new.
The President revisited another pressing topic: the widening schism between social classes.
“Inequality has deepened,” Obama said. “Upward mobility has stalled. The cold, hard fact is that even in the midst of recovery, too many Americans are working more than ever just to get by--let alone get ahead.”
This section was dedicated to his goals of strengthening the middle class, as well as creating more opportunities for white collar workers to revel in monetary gain.
Some debate was sparked at one of Obama’s remarks during his speech. In a seemingly small anecdote, he directly stated that legislative approval wasn’t exactly necessary to making progress.
“America does not stand still – and neither will I. So wherever and whenever I can take steps without legislation to expand opportunity for more American families, that’s what I’m going to do,” Obama said.
He has been known to circumvent Congress in the past, namely on the the Seal Team 6 mission to assassinate Osama bin Laden. Some may or may not agree with that to this day, but it certainly did hasten the progress of killing the FBI’s most wanted person.
Other than his Congressional disregard, nothing particularly shocking or revealing was said in the address, but some hot-button issues were further clarified upon. President Obama made it quite apparent that he means to make 2014 a better year than the last.
All the country’s citizens can do is wait and see if he follows through.
