Washington can't take a year off
President Barack Obama delivers his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill in Washington (Jan. 24, 2012) Credit: AP
State of the Union speeches in election years are always blatantly political, and the one President Barack Obama delivered Tuesday was no different. He seized the opportunity to lay out his approach to bolstering the flagging fortunes of the middle class, reducing income inequality and positioning the nation to flourish economically in years to come.
The role government should play in making that happen is the fundamental issue in this year's presidential race. The battle lines are clear: Obama and other Democrats favor an activist role for the federal government. Republicans and their candidates for president say government should just get out of the private sector's way.
That philosophical divide is behind the parties' sharp differences on issues such as taxes, spending, regulation, infrastructure, education, energy and the environment. So it's a debate the nation needs to have. Gaining some clarity about the course most voters prefer is the best hope for ending the destructive gridlock gripping Washington.
But it's a long time between now and January 2013, when the next president will be inaugurated. The nation can't afford for governing to be put on hold until then. There are things that need doing, and Obama was right to challenge Congress to get to it.
Federal unemployment compensation extensions should be reauthorized before the end of February. That's when the checks will otherwise stop for 3 million jobless Americans.
Washington should hold financial firms accountable for any fraud in selling risky mortgages to homeowners and packaging them into securities that rattled the housing market and the global economy when the investments failed. The federal government should expand opportunities for homeowners to refinance.
The Senate should give most of Obama's nominees for judgeships and executive-branch jobs timely up-or-down confirmation votes. It should allow people brought into the country illegally as children to earn citizenship by completing college or serving in the military. And it should direct more resources to repair roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
Washington isn't likely to end the take-no-prisoners partisan warfare before November, even though the nation would be better for it. That's a shame. But there are some things that should be left for a postelection consensus. Major tax changes, for example. Obama called for Congress to extend the payroll tax cut through 2012, to impose a 30 percent tax rate on annual incomes from any source of $1 million or more and to enact tax incentives for creating jobs in the United States and disincentives for taking them elsewhere. Those proposals deserve debate. But the federal tax code shouldn't be tweaked piecemeal.
What's needed is root-and-branch reform to lower rates, limit deductions, eliminate the corporate tax, tax capital gains the same as regular income and increase federal revenue in the bargain. Together with spending cuts, that's what is needed to slash budget deficits.
Obama said the nation is at its best when Americans work together as a team, like the Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden in May. That's one thing that should spark no debate.
