State of the Union hits high marks
Counting the Cost
I was among the 33.5 million people who sat riveted to their televisions, parsing every second of the State of the Union address. I was stunned to learn, through a Washington Post article by Lisa De Moraes, that viewership was less substantial for this address than last year’s 38 million, and even lower than the 48 million that watched in 2010. Are people less interested in what our president has to say? Or is there something else going on?
In any case, from my perspective this was an important and significant State of the Union address.
Unleashed from the pressure of re-election, and able to set forth a progressive and aggressive agenda, President Barack Obama dealt with some of the key issues that face our nation. He was able to utter the word “poverty” without his tongue freezing up.
Unfortunately, he is unable to utter the words “Black” or “African American.” Still, President Obama laid out an agenda that will ultimately have a positive effect on the African American community, especially if some of his efforts are targeted.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King said, “The curse of poverty has no justification in our age. It is socially as cruel and blind as the practice of cannibalism at the dawn of civilization, when men ate each other because they had not yet learned to take from soil or to consume the abundant animal life around them.
The time has come for us to civilize ourselves by the total, direct and immediate abolition of poverty.”
President Obama was not so direct, nor so cutting. But he offered important clarity to an issue his administration has ignored heretofore. While focusing on the middle class, he also noted that people should not work full time and still earn a wage that puts them beneath the poverty line. His advocacy for a minimum wage of $9 per hour, or about $18,000 a year for a single worker who might support a family was a significant move forward for the poor.
Missing–a conversation about poor people and health benefits, and about the employers who refuse to employ people full time so that they can avoid paying benefits. Obamacare will cover many of these employees, but the fact that profitable companies would rather offer a worker 22 hours than 30 to save money is reprehensible.
The State of the Union address is not an opportunity to drill down on every issue, so I very much understand that President Obama could not offer details to the many proposals he raised.
Still, it was refreshing to hear the president talk about poverty, about women’s work and wages, and about issues of equality.
The first legislation President Obama signed was the Lily Ledbetter Act, which dealt with equal pay issues. Without acknowledging race in any of these conversations, the fact is African American women (and Latinas) are at the bottom of the pay scale. Advocating equal pay and dealing with issues of poverty, and implementing solutions, improves the material conditions of women at the bottom.
President Obama discussed infrastructure improvements in his 2008 campaign. Partisan bickering has made it difficult for him to work with states to refurbish, as he says, 70,000 bridges, as well as roads and highways. The last time our nation paid attention to these structural issues was in the 1950s when President Dwight Eisenhower, in a job-creation move, built federal highways around our nation to facilitate easy transportation.
Have you driven on an interstate highway lately? Whether you are Democrat or Republican, we should all agree that these highways (some called pot hole central) need improvement? Some politicians are so willing to undermine the Obama administration that they are also willing to see our nation become dysfunctional.
The two emotional high points in this speech included the shout out to the 102-year-old woman who waited all day to vote, and the call to gun reform, mentioning victims by name. I was most moved by the family of Hadiya Pendleton, who sat with First Lady Michelle Obama, who attended their daughter’s funeral. They are not only important as parents of a gun violence victim, but as proxies for the more than 500 people shot in Chicago in the last year or so.
It was also moving to see former Congresswoman Gabby Gifford, unable to clap, who brought her hands together. The president’s comments got a standing O, but as soon as his speech was over, thirsty vultures (like Senator Marco Rubio) ran to the media to voice opposition.
The president has offered an ambitious agenda, and one that will improve the lot of all Americans. While I chafe at his failure to mention African Americans, I am excited by proposals to close the wealth gap.
His agenda won’t be implemented unless we advocate for it. What will you do to move it forward?
Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based economist and author.
DISCLAIMER: The beliefs and viewpoints expressed in opinion pieces, letters to the editor, by columnists and/or contributing writers are not necessarily those of OurWeekly.
The Senate’s Gang of Eight have put together an 844-page monstrosity known as the Border Security, Economic Opportunity and Immigration Modernization Act, legislation that President Barack Obama says he “basically approves” of.
The crafters of this essentially unreadable bill were senators Dick Durbin (Illinois), Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Michael Bennett (D-Colo.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Jeff Flake (Ariz.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.).
The right wing seems determined to associate President Barack Obama with any government program that helps people on the bottom. Thus the term Obamacare used to attack the health care program that President Obama fashioned and worked with Congress to approve. While Obamacare is not perfect, it brings more people into the healthcare system, and further solidifies the safety net that many have attempted to fray.
I never considered the late Rodney King anything of a philosopher, but as one observes Washington shenanigans, especially around fiscal matters, it seems that Brother King had a point. Can we all just, maybe, get along?
Shelby County, Ala., is suing the Justice Department because they think that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and its reauthorization in 1982 and 2006) is unfair.
For Americans living in poverty, this year’s State of the Union address was a watershed moment in recent history. President Barack Obama’s declaration that in the wealthiest nation on earth, no one working full-time should live in poverty was a message many Americans who aspire to enter into the middle class have been hoping to hear.
