The State of the Union 2011 speech, given by the President of the United States, is given to a joint session of Congress sometime during the first two months of each year. That is common knowledge and what most people should know is that it is mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Article 2, Section 3 states that he must ‘..from time to time give to congress information on the State of the Union..’
Some of the things that may or may not be known by the vast majority of people are things such as:
The President, because of the separation of powers, can not compel the congress to meet for this whenever he wants. He will present a schedule to the Speaker of the House and Majority Leader of the Senate to request that it be included in the House’s and Senate’s schedule. This has usually been accomplished by a formal letter form the President to the respective bodies.
Each year, the President will present information on what He perceives as being the State of the Union and each party will have good and bad things to say about the speech.
The State of the Union 2011 speech on January 25, 2011 was no different. There were many points made by President Obama that made a lot of sense to many of the attendees and in the viewing public. There were also many points made that the opposition party, the Republicans, believed were not in the Nations best interest. This is usually the case and a few of each might be in order.
The statements that he wants to transform various different aspects of the American future have many that will clap, as the applause suggests in the speech, however, to many the idea that something needs to be transformed brings with it the thought that in order to want to transform something you must not like the way it is being done, now. Some of those proposals were implicit in the calls for more money to be spent in the areas of education, the Military’s sexual preferences and his presentation of Korea as a model for classroom instruction.
The mention of the Immigration issue has been heralded as a major promise to enforce the laws are not convincing as he has called for the lax non-enforcement of the same laws. Presidents can say just about anything in the State of the Union speeches, however, what is said is studied for months afterward and balanced against what has happened and what happens because of the words that were used in the speech.
One of the largest issues, to many, were the references to the class warfare that was a part of this speech. A very large amount of clapping and a decent amount of derision was produced by these statements that a particular class of people should give up their tax status. This was stated not because the amount of money that could be gained by this tax overhaul is large enough to help finance some of the additional spending he mentions, but because of fairness.
