President Obama in his final State of the Union address said Americans are living in a time of “extraordinary change,” one that presents tremendous opportunities but also poses grave threats.
“It’s change that promises amazing medical breakthroughs, but also economic disruptions that strain working families,” the president said in prepared remarks.
Obama defended his economic policies, clearly in response to criticism from Republicans that the recovery has been too slow and that large threats remain.
“The United States of America, right now, has the strongest, most durable economy in the world,” he said. Anyone who claims otherwise, he said, is “peddling fiction.”
“We’re in the middle of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in history. More than 14 million new jobs; the strongest two years of job growth since the ‘90s; an unemployment rate cut in half. Our auto industry just had its best year ever.
Manufacturing has created nearly 900,000 new jobs in the past six years. And we’ve done all this while cutting our deficits by almost three-quarters,” the president said.
Obama delivered his final State of the Union as the race to replace him heats up. Acknowledging that his time in office is limited, the president said this speech will look forward not to the final year he has in office but to the next five or ten years.
“So let’s talk about the future, and four big questions that we as a country have to answer – regardless of who the next President is, or who controls the next Congress. First, how do we give everyone a fair shot at opportunity and security in this new economy?”
As Obama heads into his final year in office, the U.S. is seven years into a recovery from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. During his administration the U.S. economy has rebounded from a threat that put 8.8 million Americans out of work, nearly toppled Wall Street and the U.S. auto industry, and saw stock markets lose half their value.
All those jobs have been replaced and then some, but critics argue the quality of jobs created since the crisis was averted has left millions of Americans under-employed and wage growth has struggled to gain momentum.
Wall Street is perhaps stronger than ever, too strong perhaps by some measures. The banking industry is still concentrated among a handful of giant financial institutions – the too big to fail banks -- and stock market gains have benefited mostly the wealthiest Americans, leaving middle and lower income workers struggling to pay mortgages and cover their monthly bills.