Obama Sounds Populist Tone in SOTU Address

(Newsroom America) -- President Obama stuck to a populist tone during Tuesday's annual State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress, as he called on creating an environment of economic equality and "responsibility from everybody."

Repeating earlier calls that the wealthy should pay more in taxes, Obama said the issue of economic equality represented a return to American values and had become "the defining issue of our time."

The address, which was dubbed, "The Blueprint for America Built to Last," Obama prodded a divisive Congress to work together, pledging he would make attempts to do so as well but promising also to "fight obstruction with action."

Repeating that he wouldn't "back down," Obama said "no challenge is more urgent" than to support the Middle Class.

"We can either settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well, while a growing number of Americans barely get by or we can restore an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules," Obama said. "What’s at stake are not Democratic values or Republican values but American values. We have to reclaim them."

The address was billed as the president's first major speech of the election year and contained basic core messages he is expected to carry into the fall campaign against a still as-yet-undetermined Republican candidate.

But he took an indirect swipe at leading GOP contender Mitt Romney, who released his tax returns for 2010 and 2011 earlier in the day, renewing his call for the so-called "Buffett Rule," named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett.

The president billed it as a rule that seeks to ensure middle-class workers don't pay a higher tax rate than wealthier earners.

"Now you can call this class warfare all you want,” a feisty Obama said. “But asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.

"We don’t begrudge financial success in this country,” the president continued. “We admire it. When Americans talk about folks like me paying my fair share of taxes, it’s not because they envy the rich. It’s because they understand that when I get tax breaks I don’t need and the country can’t afford, it either adds to the deficit or somebody else has to make up the difference…That’s not right. Americans know it’s not right."

In the Republican response to the SOTU, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels praised Obama for his continued pursuit of terrorist suspects in the post-9/11 era and said Republicans should show respect for the presidency and come to terms when there is agreement on policy. He also praised the president for his strong family commitments.

But he criticized Obama over the state of the nation's spiraling debt and stagnant economy, saying the federal government had grown too large under his leadership.

"In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt. And yet, the President has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead," Daniel said. "The federal government now spends one of every four dollars in the entire economy; it borrows one of every three dollars it spends. No nation, no entity, large or small, public or private, can thrive, or survive intact, with debts as huge as ours.

"The President's grand experiment in trickle-down government has held back rather than sped economic recovery," Daniels continued. "He seems to sincerely believe we can build a middle class out of government jobs paid for with borrowed dollars. In fact, it works the other way: a government as big and bossy as this one is maintained on the backs of the middle class, and those who hope to join it."

Daniel said as Republicans "our first concern is for those waiting tonight to begin or resume the climb up life's ladder. We do not accept that ours will ever be a nation of haves and have nots; we must always be a nation of haves and soon to haves." He added that "2012 is a year of true opportunity, maybe our last, to restore an America of hope and upward mobility, and greater equality."

© 2012 Newsroom America.

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