President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, gestures as he gives his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Feb. 12, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool)
President Barack Obama, flanked by Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio, gestures as he gives his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Feb. 12, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, Pool)
President Barack Obama shakes hands with Vice President Joe Biden after the president gave his State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Feb. 12, 2013. House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio is at left. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
First lady Michelle Obama is applauded before President Barack Obama's State of the Union address during a joint session of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday Feb. 12, 2013. Front row, from left are, Nathaniel Pendleton, Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton, Mrs. Obama, Menchu Sanchez and Jill Biden. Second row, from left are, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber, Deb Carey, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Amanda McMillan, Lt. Brian Murphy and Marie Lopez Rogers. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama set up high-stakes clashes over guns, immigration, taxes and climate change in a State of the Union address that showcased a newly re-elected president determined to mark his legacy, facing off against a deeply divided Congress with Republicans eager to rein him in.
At the center of it all was a fight over the very role of government, with Obama pushing a raft of new initiatives to improve preschool programs and voting, boost manufacturing and research and development, raise the minimum wage and lower energy use. "It is our unfinished task to make sure that this government works on behalf of the many and not just the few," he said.
Republicans who control the House and hold enough votes to stall legislation in the Senate were just as quick to declare that the government helps best by getting out of the way.
"More government isn't going to help you get ahead. It's going to hold you back. More government isn't going to create more opportunities. It's going to limit them," Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said in the Republican response Tuesday night. "And more government isn't going to inspire new ideas, new businesses and new private sector jobs. It's going to create uncertainty."
Uncompromising and aggressive, Obama pressed his agenda on social issues and economic ones, declaring himself determined to intervene to right income inequality and boost the middle class. He called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform with a pathway to citizenship for 11 million illegal immigrants, far-reaching gun control measures and a climate bill to cut greenhouse gas emissions. He threatened to go around Congress with executive actions on climate change if it fails to act.
But Obama cannot count on willing partners on those issues, any one of which could tie Congress in knots for months with no guarantee of success. Gun control, which Obama made a focus of his speech, faces dim prospects on Capitol Hill. The prospect for immigration legislation is better, but no sure thing. Climate change legislation is given no chance of success.
And Obama addressed relatively briefly the looming fiscal crises confronting the nation and inevitably sucking up oxygen on Capitol Hill ? the deep automatic spending cuts or "sequester" to take effect March 1, followed by the government running out of money to fund federal agencies March 27. He made clear he will continue to press for the rich to pay more in taxes, a position Republicans have rejected.
Republicans, meanwhile, made clear they're in little mood to cooperate.
"We are only weeks away from the devastating consequences of the president's sequester, and he failed to offer the cuts needed to replace it," House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement. "In the last election, voters chose divided government which offers a mandate only to work together to find common ground. The president, instead, appears to have chosen a go-it-alone approach to pursue his liberal agenda."
Earlier Tuesday, in a meeting with television correspondents and anchors, Boehner said immigration is about the only item on Obama's list that has a chance of passing this year. He said the president is more interested in getting a Democratic majority in both chambers next year and said he doesn't believe Obama "has the guts" to take on liberals in his party over spending cuts.
Obama did reiterate his willingness to tackle entitlement changes, particularly on Medicare, though he has ruled out increasing the eligibility age for the popular benefit program for seniors.
"Those of us who care deeply about programs like Medicare must embrace the need for modest reforms ? otherwise, our retirement programs will crowd out the investments we need for our children and jeopardize the promise of a secure retirement for future generations," he said.
"But we can't ask senior citizens and working families to shoulder the entire burden of deficit reduction while asking nothing more from the wealthiest and most powerful."
On immigration, a bipartisan group of negotiators in the Senate is working to craft legislation embracing Obama's call for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants but making such a path contingent on first securing the border, a linkage Obama has not supported.
But there's no guarantee the Senate bipartisan plan will find favor with the full Senate or the House. The first test may come Wednesday morning when the Senate Judiciary Committee opens its hearings on a comprehensive immigration overhaul. Deep fault lines emerged even before the hearing began, with a leading committee Republican, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, calling Obama's remarks on immigration "deeply troubling."
"The biggest obstacle we face to reform is this nation's failure to establish lawfulness in the system," Sessions said. "The president's immigration plan meets the desire of businesses for low-wage foreign workers while doing nothing to protect struggling American workers."
The president implored lawmakers to break through partisan logjams, asserting that "the greatest nation on earth cannot keep conducting its business by drifting from one manufactured crisis to the next."
"Americans don't expect government to solve every problem," he said. "They do expect us to forge reasonable compromise where we can."
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Associated Press writers Julie Pace and Stephen Ohlemacher contributed to this report.
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/89ae8247abe8493fae24405546e9a1aa/Article_2013-02-13-State%20of%20Union/id-ef2e0375975f444bab8dee77ecc5eccf
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ANAHEIM, Calif. ? When she steps into the cage at UFC 157 this weekend, Liz Carmouche will be the first openly gay fighter in the UFC.
Samsung and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf have placed Samsung-branded NFC stickers in all 51 outlets in Singapore. Their marketing campaign runs from 8 February to 7 March, and will reward Samsung NFC-device users with an upsized drink for tapping the poster and Liking Coffee Bean?s Facebook page after it pops up. Right now, that means the Galaxy S3 or Note 2 devices, and you still have to Like the page to complete the deal. I don?t see this one going too far in terms of helping the adoption of NFC stickers or even raising the number of Likes for Coffee Bean here, especially since the promotion only runs for a month. It?s interesting, though, to see NFC continue to be used in different ways by large vendors, although each brand not working with each other to move NFC forward is a huge bump in the road for the technology. Samsung claims that other NFC-enabled, Mifare-compliant Android phones should be able to work with its TecTile NFC stickers. The NFC ecosystem in Singapore is one which the government is also enthusiastically backing, with mixed results. The government recently launched its national tap-to-pay system late last year, after years of throwing money at retail outlets to get them to put in contactless payment terminals. (Incidentally, the S3 was the chosen flagship device for the national payment system, and was used to demonstrate the application to the press.) All of this is backed on a national technology standard for contactless payment called Cepas (Contactless e-Purse Application), that was set up in 2009. Anecdotally, in spite of all the infrastructure built up around NFC payments, take-up hasn?t been great here, because of the many other ways to pay. Most who take public transport already carry a contactless card similar to the London Oyster card or the Hong Kong Octopus card. The EZ-Link card is based on that aforementioned Cepas standard. Furthermore, the iPhone?s lack of NFC capability isn?t helping the contactless situation, either.
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