State of the Union Breakdown

Every president since George Washington has given a State of the Union address and President Obama continued the tradition. Designed to give a brief overview of the key topics in current politics, these speeches have been used to discuss subjects ranging from economics to war.

Obama used his speech to highlight a variety of topics and outline his plan for legislature for the upcoming year. Topics that Obama covered vary from the education of preschoolers to modifying the second amendment rights of citizens.

Education

Education is a topic at the base of American politics today. Obama talked about education for Americans from preschoolers to college students, calling for all 50 states to provide a high quality preschool education to all 4-year-olds in the country.

According to a study by the National Institute for Early Education Research, during the 2010-2011 school year only 28 percent of 4-year-olds were enrolled in publicly funded preschools.

Obama not only discussed the need for pre-elementary school education but also the need for higher quality education on the high school and college level. He pointed out the fact that having a higher education increases the chance that the student will hold a higher paying job in the future.

Along with a call to reform preschool education, Obama also asked for reform in college education. He hopes to gain more value for students in their education in order to allow for more college level students to attend school. One way he hopes to achieve this is through a universal “College Scorecard.” This will allow students to judge a variety of colleges based upon the value of education they will receive for their money.

Minimum wage affects many high school students due to their summer jobs such as lifeguarding or bussing tables. The federal minimum wage was last set on July 24, 2009 at $7.25 per hour. States can set their own minimum wage but employers still must abide by federal law.

These state minimum wages range from the highest $9.19 in Washington to the federal amount in other states. Along with having the highest minimum wage rate in the country, Washington is also one of the few states that ties the minimum wage to inflation rates. This allows the minimum wage to automatically increase as the cost of living also increases.

Obama wants to not only raise the minimum wage but also to tie the minimum wage to the cost of living. This would force the minimum wage to rise and possibly fall as the cost of living  changes. Obama’s plan would gradually raise the federal minimum wage to $9 per hour by 2015.

His plan would also follow the lead of Washington and continuously increase the federal minimum wage to match inflation. According to a report from the White House, this increase in minimum wage will increase the income of nearly 15 million low-income workers.

Troops

The United States is beginning to wind down a war that started in 2001 with the launching of Operation Enduring Freedom. Approximately 33,000 men and women who serve in the military have been brought home since the start of the war and Obama hopes to bring home nearly 34,000 more troops over the next year.

This decrease in active military could cause problems for soldiers currently in Afghanistan, as fewer men and women would be available for patrols and security details. In order to counter this threat, Obama says that instead of occupying other nations, the U.S. will instead work to support other countries that are working to fight terrorists.

This pledge to bring troops home to their families is in conjunction with the request from the Afghan president for Special Forces to leave an eastern providence in Afghanistan.

Currently, there are 66,000 American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan with over half of these troops scheduled to be brought home by Feb. 2014.

As the number of American soldiers in Afghanistan begins to decrease, troops will begin to work increasingly to place the Afghan military in a more important role. Currently, these Afghan soldiers play a support role to the Americans, but the U.S. government is looking to change the Afghans to the dominant security force.

Gun Rights

One of the subjects at the forefront of American politics after shootings such as Sandy Hook Elementary is the second amendment. Discussion of gun rights has appeared in State of the Union addresses from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Lyndon B. Johnson, and Obama continued this theme. The President is working to enact new laws not to take away the second amendment laws from citizens, but instead to make these gun purchases safer.

One bill that Obama is working on to increase the safety of citizens is eliminating high capacity gun magazines from use. This need originated from police chiefs across the country and is mimicked by gun activists. Both Democrats and Republicans alike are supporting some of these laws and acts.

A law that is being worked on by senators from both parties is one that would make it more difficult for the resale of firearms to criminals. A similar bill to this is one that would require background checks for all gun sales. Not only would these background checks cover criminal history, but also the past mental health of possible buyers.