“I have no more campaigns to run. I know because I won both of them.”
With a sense of confidence and his poll numbers rising, the President Obama gave the State of the Union address on Tuesday night to over 31.7 million Americans.
2014 in the Rearview Mirror
- Jobs are being created at the fastest rate since 1999; over the past five years, businesses have created over 11 million new jobs. Manufacturing jobs account for 800,000 of these.
- The unemployment rate is lower now than it was before the financial crisis.
- The combat mission in Afghanistan has ended. Less than 15,000 of the 180,000 American troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan remain.
- High school graduation rates have reached an all-time high and more Americans finish college now than ever.
- 10 million Americans got health insurance in the past year. Health care inflation is at the lowest rate it has been in 50 years.
- The US has experienced the fastest economic growth in over a decade: the deficit has been cut by two thirds and the stock market has doubled.
- 700,000 veterans and military spouses were helped in getting new jobs.
- Teen pregnancies and abortions are nearing all-time lows.
- Gay marriage has gone from a “wedge issue” to a freedom in seventy percent of states.
- The population of Guantanamo Bay has been cut in half.
- Over the past six years, the U.S. has done more than ever to prevent climate change.
America Moving Forward
- With prices now below $3 per gallon, the average American family can expect to annually save $750 on gas.
- Quality childcare will be more affordable and available to middle-class and low-income families due to more slots and a new tax cut of up to $3,000 per child, per year.
- Promote free and open internet to maintain and net neutrality for the future
- Congress will need to pass a law that requires men and women doing the same work to be paid equally.
- Community college could be tuition-free in the next few years.
- Plans to pass a bipartisan infrastructure plan that could create more than thirty times as many jobs per year.
- Plans to launch a new Precision Medicine plan in efforts to find cures for diseases like cancer and diabetes as well as to give all Americas access to the personalized information they need to keep themselves and their families healthier.