US President Barack Obama's address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday Jan 20,2015

US President Barack Obama's address to a joint session of Congress

 

US President Barack Obama unveiled Tuesday night an ambitious State of the Union agenda steeped in Democratic priorities, including tax increases on the wealthy, education and child care help for the middle class and a torrent of veto threats for the GOP's own plans.

Barack Obama's address marked the first time in his presidency that he stood before a Republican-controlled Congress

US President Barack Obama has declared an end to the financial crisis and pledged economic policies to benefit all Americans, in his annual State of the Union address to Congress.

In a speech devised to appeal to working families, Barack Obama outlined his strategy for "middle-class economics".
"It's now up to us to choose who we want to be over the next 15 years," he said.
But the plans are unlikely to make it past a Republican-controlled Congress.

In a direct challenge to GOP economic ideology, Obama called for increasing the capital gains rate on couples making more than $500,000 annually, to 28 percent.The president's tax plan would also require estates to pay capital gains taxes on securities at the time they're inherited and slap a fee on the roughly 100 U.S. financial firms with assets of more than $50 billion.
Much of the $320 billion in new taxes and fees would be used for measures aimed at helping the middle class, including a $500 tax credit for some families with two spouses working, expansion of the child care tax credit and a $60 billion program to make community college free. He also has called for expanding paid leave for workers and moved on his own to lower a mortgage insurance premium rate that could attract new homebuyers.

 Barack Obama vowed in the State of the Union address Tuesday to relentlessly hunt down terrorists from 'Pakistan to the streets of Paris,' then called on Congress to approve new war powers against Islamic State militants.

Obama argued that U.S military leadership in Iraq and Syria is stopping the Islamic State's advance, but asked lawmakers 'to show the world that we are united in this mission' with a vote to authorize war against the extremist group.

Members of Congress waved pencils in the air on Tuesday night as they paid tribute to the victims of the Charlie Hebdo terror attack during President Barack Obama's State of the Union address.

Speaking to a joint session of Congress, Obama, 53, declared that America stands 'united with people around the world who've been targeted by terrorists', including the 17 recently slain in France.

At the same time, dozens of people in the House chamber raised unsharpened yellow pencils into the air in a show of support for free speech following the brutal January 7,2015  attack on the magazine.

Four hundred pencils had been brought to the address by Rep. congresswoman Gwen Moore, who believed Congress had an opportunity on Tuesday to condemn the massacre with one voice

Vice President Joe Biden and House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio applaud President Barack Obama, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2015, during his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress