State of the Union

Washington Times - Picking a fight with his own party, President Obama on Tuesday called for ending earmark spending and proposed a five-year partial budget freeze in his first State of the Union address before a Congress packed with newly ascendant Republicans eager to cut even more deeply. In a broad 62-minute speech in which he called for rejuvenating America’s innovative spirit — what he called “our generation’s Sputnik moment” — Mr. Obama said the economy is beginning to bounce back, and said now is the time to push forward with a job-growing agenda. But even as he promised to rein in spending, Mr. Obama vowed to invest in roads and infrastructure, to revamp education and to simplify the corporate and personal income-tax codes, calling the moves a down payment on longer-term fiscal moves to restore the country’s finances. “Now that the worst of the recession is over, we have to confront the fact that our government spends more than it takes in.

That is not sustainable,” Mr. Obama said. “Every day, families sacrifice to live within their means. They deserve a government that does the same.” Still, the speech struck many of the same themes the president has pitched over the last year: His spending freeze is simply an extension of an earlier three-year pledge, and his call for an infrastructure bank is a reworking of a widely panned idea he proposed four months ago. And it comes at a time when Republicans, who now control the House, are in a position to scuttle those parts of his agenda they oppose, and to push for him to go further on spending cuts. Read full story here:

State of the Union