The State of the Union at the beginning of Obama’s second term as President was, as he put it, in order to report on its status, and also to give the American people a sense of how exactly he plans on changing its status. Unlike his inaugural speech, which was a fairly celebratory occasion, the State of the Union is time to Get Down To Business. It’s not exactly a blueprint for the year – it’s expected that a certain level of advanced oratory acrobatics will take precedence over hard facts – but does give us an idea of what to expect.

So what should we expect? Well, as has been a hallmark of Obama’s career so far, he emphasized bipartisanship and implied his hope that it could actually become an element of the legislative process in his second term. And it wasn’t just words — Obama chose to adopt at least some conservative rhetoric and language throughout, promising that his plans didn’t actually mean a “bigger” government, just a “smarter” one; emphasizing that none of his proposed changes should add “a single dime” to the deficit; and tying energy research and climate change to the idea of economic growth instead of environmentalism. (Also, an honorable mention to the campaign to encourage “fatherhood” and “intact families” because “what makes you a man isn’t the ability to conceive a child, it’s having the courage to raise one.”)

Whether or not these efforts at reaching across the aisle will be effective is hard to predict; if Speaker of the House John Boehner’s reactions – which included a constant expression of thinly veiled disgust, fairly perceptible eye-rolling, and a very conspicuous lack of applause – are any indication, this venture may not be 100% successful. Which is too bad, because much of what Obama outlined is pretty ambitious; it will be hard to accomplish without bipartisan support.

Credit: AP/Charles Dharapak

Cash Rules Everything Around Obama

If you were paying attention during Obama’s presidential campaign, his thoughts on budgeting will sound pretty familiar. We’ve cut more than half of the deficit we had aimed to cut ($4 trillion), and while some would like to address the remaining $1.5 trillion via even more spending cuts than we’ve already made, Obama would instead like to focus on closing tax loopholes that benefit the very wealthy, and protect Medicare and Social Security. He proposed further reforms to Medicare that go farther than Simpson-Bowles and would involve “taxpayer subsidies to prescription drug companies and ask more from the wealthiest seniors. In an attempt to smooth over some of the rage that this idea presumably ignited in the Republican legislators present, Obama added:

I realize that tax reform and entitlement reform will not be easy. The politics will be hard for both sides. None of us will get 100 percent of what we want. But the alternative will cost us jobs, hurt our economy, visit hardship on millions of hardworking Americans. So let’s set party interests aside and work to pass a budget that replaces reckless cuts with smart savings and wise investments in our future.

9 to 5, What A Way To Make A Living

Although every politician everywhere at this point is under a great deal of pressure to create jobs, Obama talked very specifically about attracting jobs back to America from overseas. He shouted out Caterpillar and Ford for relocating jobs back to America, and in the statement that launched a thousand tech tweets, noted that “this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.” He also explained the “manufacturing innovation institute,” which is apparently a defunct warehouse that’s been transformed into a 3D printing facility. He’s launching three more and asking Congress to create fifteen more. In other news, I still don’t really understand what 3D printing is.

While we’re relocating jobs back to America, though, we’ll also be working on a “Trans-Pacific Partnership” which will encourage trade and investment with the European Union. In other global concerns, the US will work with other allies to eradicate extreme poverty on a global scale. The work includes but is not limited to empowering women, empowering bright young people, and defeating AIDS. I hope that made Reagan spin in his grave.

In super big news, Obama announced that he wants to raise the minimum wage to $9/hour, because “no one who works full time should have to live in poverty.” This was also framed fairly conservatively, with Obama helpfully pointing out that someone making more money will be less likely to need to rely on government support, and can choose between “groceries and the food bank.” Part of this initiative will also be to incentivize companies to hire more, and to hire specifically people who “have been out of work so long that no one will give them a chance anymore.”

Saul Loeb-Pool/Getty Images

She Blinded Me With Science and Also Climate Change

Obama reminded us of the government-funded work on the human genome project and the work being done to map the human brain in an effort to combat Alzheimer’s. Interestingly, he also reminded us of the monetary value of that research, pointing out that “every dollar we invested to map the human genome returned $140 to our economy” and framing these research efforts as job creators.  This may have be a setup for his transition into talking about energy and climate change, wherein he shouted out renewable energy and lower carbon emissions and then dropped this truth bomb:

We can choose to believe that Superstorm Sandy, and the most severe drought in decades, and the worst wildfires some states have ever seen were all just a freak coincidence. Or we can choose to believe in the overwhelming judgment of science and act before it’s too late.

Before anyone could get too mad, though, Obama slipped in that “we can make meaningful progress on this issue while driving strong economic growth.”  He also pointed out that other countries have historically outdone us on clean energy, and suggested a sort of space race but for clean energy. I’m interested in whether this framing is going to continue in his administration’s language from here on out, or whether this was a one-time thing.

Perhaps more interesting, though, is that Obama introduced an Energy Security Trust that’s tasked with figuring out how to get our cars to run without oil at all. He also challenged American citizens as a whole to cut our home energy consumption in half, and offered federal support to states which try to create jobs and lower energy usage.

Now It’s Time To Prove That You’ve Come Back Here To Rebuild

Noting that businesses are more likely to be attracted to places that have working roads, Obama introduced the “Fix-It-First” program, which is a job creation program that will get people working on urgent repairs across the country and was also, if I remember correctly, a key plot point of Wreck-It Ralph. “Fix-It-First” is related to the “Partnership to Rebuild America,” which is supposed to help funnel private capital into the rebuilding projects so that it’s not all taxpayer money being used. Also on the list of things we need to fix is the housing market, so Obama is introducing a new law in that would give “responsible homeowners” the chance to refinance at today’s rates.

Schoolhouse Rock

In exciting news, Obama’s newest plan in education is to make high quality preschool education available to every child in America, which sounds totally awesome. I’d like to look at some of the research he talked about in support of his point — like the fact that preschool is correlated with lower teen pregnancy and violent crime rates — because I’m not clear on whether those things are actually causal or are just both associated with higher-income areas, but nonetheless, this sounds like a good plan. He also applauded systems in place like that of P-TECH school in Brooklyn, where students graduate with both a high school diploma and the equivalent of an associate’s degree in computers or engineering. Many twentysomethings would perhaps point out that the barrier to jobs right now isn’t necessarily a lack of qualification, but it certainly sounds like an interesting option to have.

Which brings us, actually, to Obama’s next point, which was that college should be more affordable and less likely to leave people in crippling debt. Rather than providing more federal subsidies, he wants to put more pressure on colleges to “keep costs down” by updating the Higher Education Act to take into account how good a “value” colleges are when deciding whether they should receive certain types of federal aid. As someone who has both attended a very pricey private college and now works at a low-tier state university, I have mixed feelings on this; certainly there are some colleges that could stand to shave a few thousand dollars off their tuitions, but plenty of universities (especially public ones) are already spread pretty thin, and it’s unclear what Congress is going to judge as being a “good value” — for instance, will things like arts and humanities seem important enough to make the cut? Hope so! We’ll find out via the government’s new “scorecard” which families can use at home to determine different colleges’ “bang for their buck.”

Next: Immigration reform, women, terrorism, and more!

Immigrant (Reform) Song 

Obama told us that the time has come to pass comprehensive immigration reform. To Obama, reform means: stronger border security, for undocumented immigrants to get at “the back of the line” behind documented ones, and a pathway to citizenship that involves background checks, paying taxes, a “meaningful penalty” for illegal immigration, and most controversially, learning English. There wasn’t any expansion on that last point, and so I’m not sure what exactly the Obama administration imagines that looking like, but it’s interesting to note that in counterpoint, Marco Rubio delivered his response to the State of the Union in both English and Spanish.

Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves

As you may recall from the election, the Republican party has been Not So Great on the Lady Issues. (In fact, Marco Rubio, the Republican wunderkind who was chosen to respond to Obama’s address, went ahead and voted against the Violence Against Women Act just this week!) So women’s support was a big deal for Obama in getting elected, and I think he wants to continue to ride that wave. He reminded us about the Paycheck Fairness Act he got passed, and that his own vice president was involved in the original Violence Against Women Act. He talked about a world in which women can live free from discrimination in the workplace and from domestic violence, but weirdly began that sentence with “our wives, mothers, and daughters,” sort of implying that he was talking only to men and not, you know, a nation that comprises equal numbers of men and women? Noticeably absent from this section of the speech: reproductive rights/support of Planned Parenthood and/or anything about sexual assault.

Life in Wartime

Obama reminded us that since 9/11, Al Qaeda is now “a shadow of its former self,” and that the American armed forces in Afghanistan are now in a position to play a “support role.” He announced that another 34,000 servicemembers will come home from Afghanistan this year, and that the goal is ultimately a “unified and sovereign Afghanistan.” Although he says that US counterterrorism efforts will continue,

…to meet this threat, we don’t need to send tens of thousands of our sons and daughters abroad or occupy other nations. Instead, we’ll need to help countries like Yemen, Libya, and Somalia provide for their own security and help allies who take the fight to terrorists, as we have in Mali.

Interestingly, he also promised that:

…I will continue to engage Congress to ensure not only that our targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorists remains consistent with our laws and system of checks and balances, but that our efforts are even more transparent to the American people and to the world.

This seems to be a gesture at conspicuously still-open Guantánamo, without actually addressing the issue — I don’t feel like most people’s concerns with Guantánamo are really about a lack of transparency, although that’s certainly a factor. In terms of North Korea, Obama declared that he plans to stand by America’s allies, build our own missile defense system, and “take firm action” in response to future threats. Also, Iran should agree to a diplomatic solution. We’ll put pressure on Syria to stop killing its own citizens, and “stand steadfast” with Israel.

Obama also promised that America would work at bracing itself against cyberattacks, and announced that he’s signed an executive order which will “strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information-sharing and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs, and our privacy.” This part sounded sort of like a bad cyberthriller to me but probably he’s right and I’m dumb.

In recognizing and thanking those who serve in the armed forces, Obama also gave the only shoutout to queers of the night, when he said “We will ensure equal treatment for all service members, and equal benefits for their families, gay and straight.” He also talked about “investing in world-class care, including mental health care” for returning veterans, which is a pretty big deal.

Rocking the Vote

Did you vote in this election? Was it a frustrating, lengthy, and confusing process? Obama announced he wants to introduce reforms that will change that in the future. He’s created a nonpartisan commission to improve the voting experience, using two experts (one from his campaign and one from Romney’s) to head the team. Unfortunately it’s not clear whether improving the voting experience means creating consequences for things like voter disenfranchisement, voter intimidation, and straight-up lying to voters. Hopefully!

Gun Reform

In what was by far the most emotional portion of the evening, Obama talked about Hadiya Pendleton, who was just shot and killed in Chicago this month. He also called out to survivors and families of Newtown, Aurora, Oak Creek, Tucson, and Blacksburg, many of whom were invited to be in the audience, along with Gabby Giffords. He mentioned several proposals, like background checks, that are possibilities and argued that while “our actions will not prevent every senseless act of violence in this country,” we have to “uphold our ideals through the hard, often frustrating, but absolutely necessary work of self-government,” which is actually a really nice and pretty moving statement. He compared the effort to reduce gun violence with the efforts of heroines Menchu Sanchez and Desiline Victor to save infants during Sandy and vote after waiting for six hours, respectively.

Desiline Victor

Items which did not merit any mention at all included drones and DOMA.

Interestingly, Obama didn’t end on the note of us all being Americans, which often seems like something of a no-brainer. Instead, he said that we’re all citizens, something that “captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations; that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others; and that well into our third century as a nation, it remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter in our American story.” It’s a beautiful and honest sentiment. It’s worth remembering that one of our obligations to each other and ourselves as citizens is awareness of and a critical eye towards our governing bodies, so it falls to all of us to think about and react to the things said in this address and by our government over the coming year. Until the State of the Union 2014!

Pages: 1 2See entire article on one page

Before you go! Autostraddle runs on the reader support of our AF+ Members. If this article meant something to you today — if it informed you or made you smile or feel seen, will you consider joining AF and supporting the people who make this queer media site possible?

Join AF+!