President Obama’s State of the Union address last night focused heavily on the middle class, which many New England representatives see as a critical population.President Obama called 2014 an economic breakthrough for America, saying the shadow of 2008’s recession has passed. Congressman Jim McGovern, a Democrat from Massachusetts’ second district, agrees economic signs are pointing upward.
“But he also pointed out in his speech last night that not everybody is feeling the recovery,” McGovern said. “He outlined an ambition proposal to help the middle class, to strengthen the middle class and to extend ladders of opportunity to those who are struggling in poverty to get into the middle class.”
One of President Obama’s ladders to opportunity for working families are proposed tax credits of up to $3,000 for each child. But also included are tax increases on capital gains and the country’s highest earners, something that has already put distaste in the mouths of the newly Republican-controlled Congress. Massachusetts Democrat of the first district Richard Neal says the president is trying to find a middle ground on tax reform.
“I’m mindful of the fact that there are 247 Republicans in the House, more than any time since Harry Truman was President, and there are 54 Republicans in the Senate,” Neal said. “But I think that there is a path forward as it relates to tax reform with the acknowledgement that the current tax structure is unproductive and inefficient. We all agree with that. Trying to find the solution is where the challenge lies.”
President Obama also called on Congress to guarantee seven days of earned sick time, pass a law mandating equal pay for women and approve a plan offering two free years of community college for nine million students, according to White House estimates.
With many states and cities taking on the burden themselves, the president is pushing Congress to fund an infrastructure plan. With more efficient vehicles and driving down, Congressman Neal says the gas tax is no longer enough. He points to rail and broadband expansion in western Massachusetts as good examples of federal stimulus, but adds consistently increasing infrastructure funding has fallen victim to politics.
“I think a public investment in infrastructure creating greater efficiencies and higher productivity is simply a good long-term investment,” Neal said. “Here you can see now that the stalemate has now curtailed any discussion about how to resurrect a major infrastructure program that is badly needed across the country.”
President Obama noted American troop levels in Iraq and Afghanistan have dropped from nearly 180,000 six years ago to fewer than 15,000. But with the Islamic State grabbing control of portions of Syria and Iraq over the past year, he is calling on Congress to authorize continued U.S. action against the militants. Neal and McGovern say they are skeptical of an open-ended engagement in the Middle East, while Congresswoman Elizabeth Esty, a Democrat from Connecticut, says Congress needs to show unity.
“Providing the kind of stability in Syria and the greater region and not have conditions that create the enticement of these extreme ideologies,” Esty said. “That pose a threat to the world community more broadly.”
Esty and McGovern say the president’s goal of shutting down Guantanamo Bay by the end of his administration is practical and vital, calling it a stain on the U.S. Here’s McGovern.
“The fact that we have GITMO, the fact that under the previous administration in particular we were guilty of torture I think has endangered our troops and enflamed our enemies,” said McGovern.
McGovern says there are prisons in the U.S. capable of housing alleged terrorists while Neal says stirring up interest from American allies to take low-level prisoners makes good sense.
Finally, President Obama called on Washington to set aside cynicism. He said members of Congress agree that gridlock is not what they signed up for. A member of the House since 1989, Neal says Congress has dramatically changed with more excitable language and a lessening sense of compromise.
“No matter how well organized the Tea Party is or some of the more left elements of the Democratic Party there is also another reality,” Neal said. “That is that suburban independents now determine the outcome of these elections. I think we need to be very mindful of the fact that they don’t like excitable language and that they do want solutions.”
