Stumping for a "fair" economy and calling for the wealthy to contribute more in taxes, US President Barack Obama laid out the populist themes that are to dominate his re-election bid as Republicans seek to oust him in November's presidential election.
The White House has insisted in recent days that Obama's third State of the Union address on Tuesday was not a campaign event and would simply lay out his agenda, but the annual speech before Congress gave the Democrat a unique stage to make the case to the American people for more than an hour that they should endorse his vision for America.
Obama was also headed out immediately on a cross-country trip to promote the policies in a series of key battleground states where it is crucial to secure support in the election. The three-day, five-state tour that would highlight points from the State of the Union address is to kick off Wednesday with stops at a factory in Iowa and a high-tech business in Arizona.
The speech highlighted Obama's successes, beginning and ending with plaudits for the US troops who the president recently withdrew from Iraq and for the Navy Seals who killed terrorist leader Osama bin Laden. But it also attempted to blunt potential Republican critics and to paint a picture of an improving economy even as unemployment remains at 8.5 percent.
"The state of our union is getting stronger," he said as he pointed to added jobs in the past two years, "and we've come to far to turn back now." His economic vision - with more taxes for the wealthy and new government programmes - is in sharp contrast to Republicans, who call for less government involvement in the economy, lower taxes and less regulation.
The Republican candidates wasted no time in attacking Obama with former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney saying the president has "an actual record of debt, decline and disappointment." "The president will do what he does best, give a nice speech, a lot of memorable phrases in it, but he won't give you the hard numbers," Romney said earlier Tuesday.
Rival Newt Gingrich told supporters that Obama "doesn't seem to operate in the same planet you and I do." Romney himself is likely to come under sharp attack from Obama's populist rhetoric, which came the same day Romney released tax returns that showed 42.6 million dollars of income for 2010 and 2011.
He paid about 15 per cent in taxes, far less than the minimum of 30 percent that Obama said on Tuesday that millionaires should pay. That 15 percent rate - the prevailing rate for investment earnings - is significantly lower than that paid by most US citizens on their salaried incomes. Obama, who himself reported 1.8 million dollars in income in 2010, painted the tax issue as a choice between forcing the wealthy to pay the burden or to cut government programmes.
"Do we want to keep these tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, or do we want to keep our investments in everything else - like education and medical research, a strong military and care for our veterans?" he asked. "Because if we're serious about paying down our debt, we can't do both."
The most recent job approval ratings for Obama released by the pollster Gallup showed 46 per cent of Americans disapprove of his performance, placing him among the US presidents with the lowest approval ratings in the third year of their presidencies. But the call for a tax cut for the rich was likely to play well with much of the electorate and not just the left-leaning members of the Democratic Party. More than half of the Americans questioned for a CBS/New York Times poll said taxing investment income at a different rate is unfair and that the rate should be the same as that for other income.
But beyond a political talking point, the proposal was likely to get nowhere fast as Congress has been intent on halting Obama's efforts over the past year and appeared unlikely to help him get much done before November when lawmakers also stand for election.
With job approval ratings for Congress even lower than those for Obama, the president attempted to lay the blame at the feet of legislators. "I bet most Americans are thinking the same thing right now: Nothing will get done this year or next year or maybe even the year after that because Washington is broken," he said.
"Can you blame them for feeling cynical?" he asked, pointing to a showdown over raising the nation's debt ceiling that led to a ratings downgrade last year and a near-government shutdown. He called on lawmakers to "lower the temperature in this town" and "end the notion that the two parties must be locked in a perpetual campaign of mutual destruction."
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