Obama Promises Greater Equality

In his State of the Union address – perhaps his last, if the American people choose not to re-elect him for a second term – President Barack Obama announced plans to cut the gap between the rich and the poor.

There is a widespread expectation that President Obama’s election campaign will focus mainly on social inequality, which has grown dramatically in the U.S. over the past thirty years. His State of the Union message, which the President addresses to Congress every year, did indeed contain this thread. Obama called on Congress to agree to what has become known as the Buffet Rule, which would see every U.S. citizen making over a million dollars a year taxed at 30 percent, allowing no tax credits or clever tricks to lower this threshold.

The rule is the brainchild of Warren Buffet, the second richest American in the world, who, last year, publicly shared his amazement that he paid tax at a lower rate than his secretary. To underline his determination, Obama invited Buffet’s secretary, Debbie Bosanek, to attend the address. She sat next to the president’s wife, Michelle.

The plans to increase taxes for millionaires have no chance of being implemented, at least not before the election, because the House of Representatives is controlled by the Republicans, who have been resisting these proposals for years. However, they fit well with the tax return filed by Mitt Romney, Obama’s likely opponent in the autumn elections, which had been disclosed several hours earlier. Romney earned nearly $43 million over the past two years but paid just 14 percent in tax.

Obama promised that he would not raise taxes for families on annual incomes of less than $250,000, who have been hit hardest by a crisis that has now been rumbling on for several years.

“You can call it class warfare all you want,” he said, turning to the Republicans. “But… most Americans would call that common sense.” Earlier, he also said, “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, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

Obama also proposed that Congress abolish tax breaks for companies that cut jobs in the U.S. and open factories abroad in places like China. Such firms include Apple, manufacturer of the iPhones beloved by Americans, which are manufactured in the Chinese city of Shenzhen.

However, taxes and inequality were not the main focuses of the address. The President devoted more time to advertising his successes, arguing that America had already emerged from the crisis thanks to his administration.

“The state of our Union is getting stronger,” he said, using a slightly different wording to that usually employed by Presidents in the address. “In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs,” Obama boasted. (The unemployment rate has recently fallen slightly to 8.5 percent.) He also defended the government’s controversial decision to bail out car companies: “Today, General Motors is back on top as the world’s number-one automaker,” said the president.

In his speech, which lasted over an hour and was interrupted by over 80 rounds of applause, Obama listed his successes as well as the plans that have no chance of coming to fruition. “Send me a bill… I will sign it tomorrow,” he said several times, even though everyone in the room knew that the Republicans would never send him any of the laws he wanted. Obama also failed to mention his social reforms, which, until recently, he listed as his greatest achievement. Although they were intended to provide health insurance to most of the 50 million uninsured Americans, the Republicans see the measures as the greatest calamity to befall America since 9/11.