PRESIDENT BARACK Obama will lay out the themes of his re-election campaign in his third – and possibly last – state of the union address to Congress at 9pm eastern time tonight – 2am Irish time tomorrow.
The president will leave tomorrow morning on a three-day tour through the swing states of Iowa, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado and Michigan, where he will elaborate on tonight’s message.
In a video sent by email to supporters, Mr Obama promised to provide a “blueprint for an American economy that’s built to last”.
Mr Obama said tonight’s speech “will be a bookend” to his landmark address in Kansas last month, in which he called economic inequality “the defining issue of our time”.
This was “a make-or-break moment for the middle class”, who had witnessed the erosion of the social contract that offered them prosperity, he said then.
“We can go in two directions,” Mr Obama said in the preview video. “One is towards less opportunity and less fairness or we can fight for . . . an economy that works for everyone, not just a wealthy few.”
The president will state the necessity of raising taxes on the wealthy to lower the budget deficit, something he has tried but failed to do. Opinion polls show some three-quarters of Americans agree with him on this point.
Mr Obama is expected to invoke the “Buffett rule”, after the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who says it is not fair he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary.
The US taxes profits on investments at only 15 per cent, compared to 35 per cent paid by many working Americans.
The Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, whose fortune is estimated at $250 million, admitted last week he was taxed at about 15 per cent. Mr Romney will today release a copy of his 2010 tax returns and an estimate of his 2011 taxes. He will also deliver a speech on economic issues, ahead of Mr Obama’s address.
In Kansas, Mr Obama spoke of the “breathtaking greed of a few” and defined the Republicans’ philosophy as: “We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.”
Tonight’s speech will defend the government’s role in achieving a more fair distribution of wealth. Republicans say the government must “get out of the way”.
Mr Romney has accused Mr Obama of “wanting to put free enterprise on trial” and of attempting to divide Americans “with the bitter politics of envy”.
By attacking Mr Romney for destroying thousands of jobs while he was chief executive of Bain Capital, Newt Gingrich, who has just won the South Carolina primary, has dragged the presidential campaign onto the terrain chosen by Mr Obama, the conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer complained in a column in the Washington Post entitled “The GOP’s suicide march”.
Mr Obama will portray Congress as a dysfunctional “do-nothing” body responsible for the paralysis in Washington. House speaker John Boehner on Fox News described the argument as “pathetic”. While Mr Obama’s own approval ratings have risen from the low 40s to 48 per cent, Congress’s approval is at record lows, hovering just above single digits.
The Republican House of Representatives blocked the $447 billion jobs bill which Mr Obama proposed last September. He has since focused on a “we can’t wait” campaign of executive actions.
The first, announced in Nevada in October, offered assistance to one million mortgage holders whose houses are worth less than the debts owed on them.
There are feeble signs that the US economy is improving. The jobless rate fell last month to 8.5 per cent, the lowest in three years.